THE GALAPAGOS TORTOISES. 287 



specimen weighing a hundred and twenty-five pounds, after losing forty pounds 

 of its weight in a year's voyaging, before being bought by Meyen from a 

 Galapagos Whaler at Honolulu. 



The more important items in the description are in the words of the au- 

 thors: — "Testudo, toto corpore nigro; testa gibba, scutellis dorsalibus priori 

 posteriorique altius in medio elevatis, cunctis loricae margine striatis, lateribus 

 subcarinatis. Les enveloppes de cette tortue ont douze pouces de longueur et 

 huit de largeur. La carapace est tres bomb^e, arrondie, et le disque compose 

 de treize ecailles; des cinq qui forment la rangee du milieu, deux ont un diametre 

 transversal plus considerable que les autres; plusieurs sont protuberantes k 

 leur centre, mais surtout I'anterieur et la posterieur. . . .Le plastron se compose 

 de seize pieces, dont huit en avant, une paire beaucoup plus large au miUeu, 

 et six en arriere: les deux premieres sont arrondies et courbees en bas; les 

 posterieurs assez profondement echancrees. Toutes offrent des stries concen- 

 triques et paralleles entre elles." 



Dumeril et Bibron, Erpetol. Gener., 1835, 2, p. 118, give the length of the 

 type as 34", and those of a larger carapace as "Long, (en dessus) 71"; haut. 

 28"; larg. (en dessus) 86"." 



In a description taken from a specimen of about eleven inches in length 

 (Plate 24, probably an average individual), the form of the species is approxi- 

 mately a short oval in which the ends do not converge enough to render them 

 at all pointed. In fact the shape would not be badly described as subtruncate 

 with the front a little the more rounded and the opposite extremity, across the 

 caudal scale somewhat more truncate. The proportions of an individual of 

 about this length have a width of nearly three fourths and a height of about 

 one half of the straight length. A flattening on the back is usually m ^st appar- 

 ent across the third and the fourth of the vertebral plates. The descent from 

 this portion is more gradual forward in the first and the second vertebrals and 

 more rapid backward through the fourth and the fifth vertebrals and the caudal. 

 The arch across the middle of the back is low and broad. The entire series of 

 the marginal plates forms scallops the more prominent of which are the first 

 to the fourth and the eighth to the hindmost, inclusive, at each side of the 

 median line. The areolar spaces on the costal scales, and on the vertebrals 

 are a low convex, those of the first and the fifth vertebrals being most prominent. 

 The general outline is rather smooth or even. The concentric striae are strongly 

 marked on the scales of all the young. At the fourth and at the eighth of the 

 marginals, on each side, the notches at the outer angles of the bridge are 



