THE GALAPAGOS TORTOISES. 287 
specimen weighing a hundred and twenty-five pounds, after losing forty pounds 
of its weight in a year’s voyaging, before being bought by Meyen from a 
Galapagos Whaler at Honolulu. 
The more important items in the description are in the words of the au- 
thors: — ‘‘Testudo, toto corpore nigro; testa gibba, scutellis dorsalibus priori 
posteriorique altius in medio elevatis, cunctis loricae margine striatis, lateribus 
subearinatis. Les enveloppes de cette tortue ont douze pouces de longueur et 
huit de largeur. La carapace est trés bombée, arrondie, et le disque composé 
de treize ecailles; des cing qui forment la rangée du milieu, deux ont un diametre 
transversal plus considérable que les autres; plusieurs sont protubérantes 4 
leur centre, mais surtout l’antérieur et la postérieur....Le plastron se compose 
de seize piéces, dont huit en avant, une paire beaucoup plus large au milieu, 
et six en arriére: les deux premiéres sont arrondies et courbées en bas; les 
postérieurs assez profondément echancrées. Toutes offrent des stries concen- 
triques et paralléles entre elles.” 
Duméril et Bibron, Erpétol. Génér., 1835, 2, p. 118, give the length of the 
type as 34’’, and those of a larger carapace as ‘‘ Long. (en dessus) 71’’; haut. 
28’’; larg. (en dessus) 86’’.” 
In a description taken from a specimen of about eleven inches in length 
(Plate 24, probably an average individual), the form of the species is approxi- 
mately a short oval in which the ends do not converge enough to render them 
at all pointed. In fact the shape would not be badly described as subtruncate 
with the front a little the more rounded and the opposite extremity, across the 
caudal scale somewhat more truncate. The proportions of an individual of 
about this length have a width of nearly three fourths and a height of about 
one half of the straight length. A flattening on the back is usually most appar- 
ent across the third and the fourth of the vertebral plates. The descent from 
this portion is more gradual forward in the first and the second vertebrals and 
more rapid backward through the fourth and the fifth vertebrals and the caudal. 
The arch across the middle of the back is low and broad. The entire series of 
the marginal plates forms scallops the more prominent of which are the first 
to the fourth and the eighth to the hindmost, inclusive, at each side of the 
median line. The areolar spaces on the costal scales, and on the vertebrals . 
are a low convex, those of the first and the fifth vertebrals being most prominent. 
The general outline is rather smooth or even. The concentric striae are strongly 
marked on the scales of all the young. At the fourth and at the eighth of the 
marginals, on each side, the notches at the outer angles of the bridge are 
