ORDER CHELONIA. 69 



with the vertebral, — which character constitutes ahnost the 

 only distinction of importance between this species and T. 

 Indica, excepting the colour. Marginal scuta, twenty-three. 



Mr. Bell adds, that the specimen from which his descrip- 

 tion was given was then living, and had been in his possession 

 since the commencement of the summer, during which time it 

 had had the range of a small orchard, feeding heartily on 

 grass, which it plucked with a movement similar to that of a 

 goose. The neck is so extensile as to permit the head to be 

 raised above the level of the top of the back, and thus to 

 enable the animal to look around on all sides by merely 

 turning the head. It is the largest known species of land- 

 tortoise, (having the shell following the curvature two feet 

 long,) excepting T. Indica. 



To Mr. Bell we shall be indebted for our account of two 

 genera (or subgenera, according to the Cuvierian plan) of land 

 tortoises, which form a natural passage from the land to 

 the fresh-water tortoises : these are the pyxis and kinyooys. 

 We shall present our readers with an abstract of that gentle- 

 man's paper on the subject, in the fifteenth volume of the 

 Linna^an Transactions, Part the Second. 



This gentleman was formerly of opinion that the affinities 

 which connect the fresh-water tortoises with those of the land, 

 were to be found in the genus Terrapene, and especially in 

 those species confounded by writers under the trivial name 

 Clausa. These last, however, are true fresh-water tortoises, 

 notwithstanding a certain approximation in their habits and 

 structure to those of Testudo proper ; and Mr. Bell w^as 

 unable to find in the known species of the latter family the 

 relations of which he was in search. 



He was fortunate enough, however, afterwards to obtain a 

 living specimen of a new species of tortoise {Kinyxys Cas- 

 tanea), which appeared to possess those relations. The 

 depression, and great lateral expansion of the shell, evince an 



