EAST AFRICAN TORTOISES. 927 



" 7.22.50 put her right hind leg down and moved all eggs from 

 the centre of hole to beneath the ledge of undercut. 



" 7.24.10 seventh egg laid, which appeared to bo slightly- 

 smaller than its predecessors. I have omitted to mention that 

 she raised herself slightly before depositing each egg. 

 • "7.25 p.m. put down her right foot and pushed the eggs 

 about quite forcibly till they lay in a semicircle, three-quarters 

 of each egg being in the undercut. 



" 7.2G.10 put down her left foot. 



" 7.27 put down her right foot. 



" 7.27.50 put down her left foot. It now became obvious 

 that she was scraping down the sides of the crater, using her feet 

 alternately. 



, ." 8 p.m. She now commenced a very definite treading move- 

 ment with the object of pounding the soil. The action was very, 

 mechanical, and she dug two little pits with her hind feet to find 

 sufficient earth to cover the eggs rather than utilise the earth 

 already excavated which lay scattered about. 



" Not once during three hours had she faced about to examine 

 the result of her labours or inspect her own eggs, which she had 

 buried without ever seeing. I was so struck by the mechanicnl 

 nature of the proceeding that I picked her up and removed her 

 a couple of feet away from the hole and on hard ground. There 

 she continued trampling away without interruption — it was a 

 sorry spectacle to see so much misplaced energy." 



I replaced her over the original site and left her to trample 

 it to her heart's content. In the morning she was resting 

 motionless on the spot and remained so till I left at 9 a.m., how 

 much longer I do not know. The next evening she returned and 

 slept on the spot, and I noticed she did so many times, probably 

 every night. 



I had removed the fifth egg before she filled in the hole, and 

 this measured 35 x 32-5 mm. The shell was exceedingly liard, 

 thin, and brittle, and took half an hour to drill. The albumen 

 was turgid, coming forth in lumps. The yolk was an unpleasant 

 ochre, very different from that of a fresh fowl egg. 



On the 12tli of June I made a note to the effect that, in addition 

 to sleeping on the spot where her eggs were hidden, she relieves 

 herself and makes her droppings on the site frequently, if not 

 daily. I sent her away about the end of the month. 



On July 8th it occurred to me that it might reqtiire her assist- 

 ance for the young to escape from the " nest," as the surface of 

 the ground above them had set as hard as cement. I therefore 

 dug down to the eggs and found the top of the uppermost only 

 2 1 inches below the surface. They had not hatched, so 1 left 

 them till 21. viii.22, i.e., three months from time of laying ftnd 

 then dug them all up. They had not developed embryos (so 

 I conclude that they were infertile), nor had they decomposed 

 beyond a slight smell. • 



In no fewer than six of the localities mentioned for this species, 



