PREFACE. 



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The Collections of Reptiles of the British Museum, the 

 College of Surgeons, and Mr. Bell, have furnished the 

 basis of this work. The two first of these collections con- 

 tain many of the species which have been described by Dr. 

 Shaw ; the College of Surgeons contains the Tortoises 

 which were in the Leverian Museum ; but in the part now 

 published I am most indebted to the kindness of Mr. Bell, 

 whose collection of Tortoises far exceeds that of any museum 

 in Europe, and whose liberality in allowing me the use of it 

 I cannot too highly appreciate. It is to be hoped that his 

 Monograph, for which he has collected them, and for which 

 he has kept and had drawn alive more than two-thirds of the 

 known species, will shortly appear. 



To render the collection of species as complete, and the 

 synonyma as correct, as possible, every opportunity has been 

 taken, during my visits to the continental museums, to exa- 

 mine and take notes of the individual specimens which have 

 been described by the various foreign authors who have 

 written on this subject. Amongst the continental cabinets 

 that of the Garden of Plants, of Paris, must be first men- 

 tioned, if not from its intrinsic value, from the fact that most 

 of the modern original writers on this branch of natural 

 history have used it as their type collection ; witness the 

 works of La Cepede, Latreille, and Daudin, among the 

 French ; and Oppel, Oken, and Schweiger, among the 

 Germans. It is much to be regretted that many of the 

 specimens described by these authors should not have been 

 more particularly ticketed, and that most of the species 



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