~ 
1870. | DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE DERMATEMYD&. 711 
low, varied with black beneath; the hinder margin entire. Vertebral 
plates bluntly keeled in front; the first pentangular, twice as loug 
as broad, narrow in front, and gradually narrower and truncated be- 
hind ; the second elongate, suddenly narrowed and produced behind 
and rounded at the end; the third smaller than the second, pent- 
angular, notched in front, narrow, acute, with a sharp prominent 
keel behind ; the fourth elongate, oblong, twice as long as broad, 
six-sided, suddenly contracted and produced in front. 
Hab. Assam. 
This species is most like Pangshura tecta; but the shell is much 
more ventricose, and the first vertebral plate is much narrower and 
longer compared with its width, and the second vertebral plate is 
very differently shaped, as is also the fourth; but this may be an 
unusual variation. But the lightness, thinness, and ventricose cha- 
racter of the shell marks it as a peculiar species. The fourth, sixth, 
eighth, and especially the tenth marginal shields have the upper edge 
produced and more or less extended up between the sutures of the 
eostal shields. 
5. On the Family Dermatemyde, and a Description of a living 
Species in the Gardens of the Society. By Dr. J. E. 
Gray, F.R.S. &e. 
(Plate XLII.) 
Mr. Bartlett has sent to me to-day (August 6th) four living fresh- 
water Tortoises to examine and name, recently purchased for the 
Society’s collection, which, I am informed, came from the Laguna 
de Terminos in Yucatan. 
They consist of two specimens of Cinosternon with a black head 
and a yellowish spot over the nose (but as yet I must own I do not 
know the characters of the species of this genus), an adult spe- 
cimen of Hmys ornata (the latter animal would not extend its neck, 
so that I could not see the colour of his head and neck; but it 
snapped most furiously at every thing that came within a few inches 
of it, and as rapidly withdrew its head), and a young specimen of 
what I take to be Dermatemys abnormis of Mr. Cope, which has not 
before come under my observation. 
In the ‘ Proceedings’ of the Society for 1847, p. 55, I described 
the shell of a large freshwater Tortoise which had been presented 
to the Society by Lieut. Mawe, R.N., who found it in ‘South 
America”’ in 1833, under the name of Dermatemys mawii. It is 
peculiar, having the sterno-costal suture covered with four large 
distinct plates ; and I stated that it in this respect agreed with Pla- 
tysternon, but that it had a very differently formed shell and had 
much the external appearance of Phrynops geoffroyi, but there was 
no appearance of any scar on the inner surface of the sternum for 
the attachment of the pelvis, and that it had no intergular plate. 
Proc. Zoo. Soc.—1870, No. XLVIII. 
