THE GIGANTIC MASCAIIENE TOKTOISES. 877 



two vertebrte were standing nearly at a right angle. It will be 

 remembered that Leguat mentions {ante, p. 71) — "There's one 

 thing very odd among them ; they always place Sentinels at some 

 Distance from their Troop, at the four corners of their Camp, to 

 which the Sentinels turn their Backs, and look with the Eyes as 

 if they were on the Watch." This habit of raising their necks 

 nearly perjjendicular must have greatly aided the capability of 

 seeing to some distance around them \\hich these animals seem to 

 have possessed. 



Dr. Giinther assumes that "some land tortoises were carried 

 by stream or current from Madagascar or Africa to the jNIascarene 

 Islands, in preference to assuming a former continuity of land 

 between the Mascarene Archipelago and Africa"; but the direction 

 of the great equatorial current, and prevailing south-east trade 

 ■wind, militate considerably against the theory. 



" With this hypothesis" (of submergence of land between the 

 Mascarene Islands), writes Dr. Giinther, " we should be obliged 

 to contend for this animal type an age extending over enormous 

 periods of time, of which the period requii-ed for the loss of power 

 of flight in the Dodo or Solitaire is but a fraction." (See Nature, 

 vol. xii, 1875, pp. 238, 259, 296.) 



Of the remains from Rodriguez, the species Testudo Vosmoeri 

 can alone be distinguished ; of this reptile an extensive series is 

 23reserved in the Cambridge Museum, from Newton's find. 



