GIANT TORTOISES— LAND MOLLUSCS 205 



the other hand, still retains — or, at all events, did so a few years ago — its particular 

 species of tortoise, namely T. daudini. The largest known specimen of this species 

 — and in fact the largest example of the whole group which has been seen alive — 

 measured at the time of its death 67i inches over the curve of the shell and 

 55 inches in a straight line, while its weight was no less than 560 lbs. From 

 its original home this monster had been carried — it is said a century and a 

 half ago — to Egmont Island, in the Chagos group, whence it was transported 

 to England. Rodriguez was inhabited by Testudo vosrnairi, a species long 

 since extinct, and characterised by the extreme thinness and compressed form 

 of its shell, features recalling the saddle-backed T. cphippium, of the Galapagos 

 Islands. 



Van Neck, the discoverer of the dodo, saw vast numbers of these tortoises 

 when he visited Mauritius in the year 1598 ; and they must have been equally 

 numerous in Reunion, where one of the early voyagers mentions having killed a 

 couple of dozen under a single tree in one afternoon. According, however, to 

 Leguat, they were most numerous in Rodriguez, where there seem to have been 

 two species in addition to the aforesaid T. vosmaeri. 



Little is known with regard to the habits of the Mascarene tortoises in a state 

 of nature, although it is probable that these were very similar to those of their 

 Galapagos cousins, of which a full and interesting account is given in Darwin's 

 Voyage of a Naturalist. 



In regard to South Albemarle and its tortoises, a German explorer has written 



as follows :—" The island is an atoll [a ring-shaped coral-island] cut through in 



three places, with a greatest length of about 20 miles. The chief hindrances in 



the search for the tortoises is the impenetrability of the island. The soil consists 



entirely of sharp, water-worn corals, with their points uppermost, while the whole 



is covered with such thick masses of low scrub that a way has to be cut with an 



axe, so that an extended search over a large area is out of the question. To land 



on the outside is dangerous, on account of the heavy surf ; while landing from the 



inside of the atoll is much hindered by the dense thicket of mangrove-trees. . . . 



Thousands of mosquitoes prevent one remaining over night in those places which 



the tortoises frequent. Then at last, when one has discovered, by a stroke of luck, 



one of the creatures in the thick scrub where they hide during the heat of the day, 



the real hard work begins, namely the conveyance of the reptile to the shore. Six 



reached Europe alive : two of them were sent to Frankfort, and the four others to 



Hamburg." 



The land-molluscs of many of the islands of the Mascarene 

 Land-Molluscs. . . 



Province possess features which render them as a whole very markedly 



distinct from those of both Africa and Madagascar. Malagasy affinities, as might 

 naturally be expected, are most pronounced in the case of the Comoros, where we 

 find the genus Cyclostoma strongly developed, and but one of Achatina (see the 

 chapters on the faunas of Ethiopian Africa and Madagascar). The genus Ennea, 

 in which the shell is of an elongated spiral form recalling Pupa, is very character- 

 istic of the Comoros, where it is represented by at least fifty species. The very 

 remarkable small snails known as Cycloturus, belonging to the operculated family 

 Cyclophoridw, and in which the coils of the shell are disconnected, are absolutely 



