522 miss joan b. procter on the 



Notes, 



The following field-notes and observations on the original 

 specimens, and those collected on subsequent expeditions, are 

 contributed by Mr. Loveridge : — 



" Habitat. 



" The first specimen of this tortoise which I met with was 

 found dead at the foot of a precipitous rock some 40 feet in 

 height and situated near the top of a rocky kopje 500 feet 

 above the surrounding dry thoi-n-bush country. From the 

 flattened and broken remains, I concluded that it was a species 

 unknown to me, and crushed by a rock having fallen upon it. 

 (The rocks are grey granite, sheer j)recipiees on the kopjes and 

 rounded boulders scattered on the plains around. Most of the 

 specimens have been collected beneath the latter.) On December 

 8th, 1918, my native collector brought in a small specimen which 

 I at once assumed was T. tornieri Sieb., of which I had read brief 

 notices but had never seen the original description. During 

 succeeding days two batches of these tortoises were found in 

 crevices or beneath rocks, but though I did not leave the district 

 till December 28th, and had a native looking for them constantly, 

 no more were found. 



" On January 1st, 1921, I sent the same boy who was with me 

 for two years before, back to the same locality which lies south of 

 Dodoma in arid country. Here, again, he found but two or three 

 specimens, but, ranging round, came upon another kopje where 

 they were more plentiful, though he alleged that without a single 

 exception they were under the rocks, of which he had to remove 

 a great many before being able to efiect captures. He had one 

 piece of good fortune in finding four young specimens all together 

 beneath one boulder, with the exception of a slightly larger one 

 already caught : these were the only young specimens taken. The 

 smallest of these was unfortunately trodden upon and promptly 

 died. The shell is much depressed as in the adult. When 

 Mr. Boulenger described the species in 1920, he assumed a small 

 dome-shaped tortoise, which I found preserved in a bottle (no 

 da.ta) in a German house near Morogoro, to be the young of 

 T. loveridgii ; this, however, is disproved by the finding of young 

 specimens with depressed shells. 



" In November 1921, 1 spent an afternoon with my boy looking 

 for T. loveridgii at Dodoma. He first took me to the place 

 where he got the eleven tortoises, which is not on a kopje but on 

 a huge rock 100 yards from a kopje. The rock is about 30 feet 

 long and 10 feet wide, and slopes up from the ground to a height 

 of 7 or 8 feet. On the knob is a flattish boulder, and beneath 

 this he found them all in January (evidently sestivating — January 

 and February being our hottest months). The tortoises therefore 

 climbed up the boulder : one would certainly never think of looking 

 for them in such a spot. We then went to the place where he 



