3 72 CHELONIA 



is inhabited by one pair only. When the dew is on the grass, 

 or after rain, they emerge in search of food, which consists of 

 grass, succulent vegetables, fruit, etc. They also eat the gum 

 that exudes from trees, especially the resin of the pine. The 

 eggs are laid in June, not in their domicile, but in a separate 

 cavity near the entrance ; a set consists of five eggs, almost round, 

 and very large, namely, 40 mm., or more than one inch and a 

 half in diameter. To capture the G-opher a deep hole is dug at 

 the mouth of their home, into which they fall as they emerge for 

 food. In Southern Texas and neighbouring parts of Mexico they 

 are represented by a smaller and lighter coloured species. 



T. tahulata, widely spread over Tropical South America, whence 

 it is often brought over as a curiosity, reaches a large size, 

 specimens nearly two feet in length being not uncommon. The 

 shell is flat on the top, and is very elongated, without a nuchal, but 

 with an undivided supracaudal shield. The carapace is very dark 

 brown or black, each shield with a yellow or orange centre ; the 

 plastron is brown and yellow, the dark colour being mostly con- 

 fined to the middle portion. The ground-colour of the skin of 

 the limbs is blackish, but the scales are orange or red. The head 

 is yellow and black. This species inhabits the forests, and lives 

 chiefly on the fruits of trees ; in captivity they are said to take 

 bread soaked in milk or water, lemons, apples, bananas, cabbage, 

 gourds, and also meat, at least the males. 



Gigantic Land-toetoises differ from the others in no essential 

 points except their large size. The term gigantic is, however, 

 applied to many of them by courtesy only, since they do not 

 exceed the dimensions of large Turtles. A truly gigantic species, 

 T. atlas, has left its remains in the Sivalik Hills of late Miocene 

 or early Pliocene date. The skull is between seven and eight 

 inches long, and is well preserved, but the correctness of the 

 dimensions of the specimen, as it now stands, restored in the 

 IsTational Collection, is open to doubt. The shell was probably not 

 more than six feet long. Miocene and Pliocene Europe was also 

 inhabited by large tortoises, with shells about four feet long, e.g. 

 T. pcrpigniana, whose bony plates are one inch thick ; others 

 have been found in North America. Such large tortoises are 

 now restricted to two widely separated regions of the world, 

 namely the Galapagos Islands (which have received their name 

 from these creatures, gaUpago being one of the Spanish terms for 



