3<H 



The Museum Gazette 



NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND EXTRACTS. 

 Giant Tortoise Fossil in the Fay£m. 



Dr. C. W. Andrews, F.R.S., in his " Descriptive Catalogue 

 of the Tertiary Vertebrata of the Fayum " (recently printed 

 by order of the Trustees of the British Museum), shows that 

 giant land tortoises existed in North Africa at a much earlier 

 date than elsewhere. The fact that tortoises of the pleuro- 

 diran section are now confined to the southern hemisphere 

 supports the theory of a former land connection between the 

 continents of Africa and America. " Speaking generally, it 

 appears that (i) probably in Jurassic times Africa and 

 South America formed a continuous land-mass; (2) in the 

 Cretaceous period the sea encroached southwards over this 

 land, forming what is now the South Atlantic. How far this 

 depression had advanced southwards at the end of the' 

 secondary period is not clear, but it appears certain that the 

 final separation of the two continents did not take place till 

 Eocene times, and that there may have been a chain of islands 

 between the northern part of Africa and Brazil which persisted 

 even till the Miocene." 



A Mole in Captivity. 



The following note on a captive mole by Lionel E. Adams, 

 B.A., is taken from the Manchester Memoirs, vol. 1. (1906), 

 No. 9. 



"At noon, on December 15, 1904, I found a mole on 

 the path in Reigate Park. The little beast was wandering 

 aimlessly about without attempting to burrow. I brought 

 him home in one of my leather gloves— not in my pocket, 

 for reasons which previous experience had furnished — and 

 placed him in an empty sugar case with six inches of 

 earth banked up at one end. During the afternoon I noticed 

 him shivering as if with cold, and I provided him with a 

 large handful of hay rolled up to resemble a mole's nest, 



