THE GIGANTIC LAND-TORTOISES OF MAURITIUS. 
43 
Testudo perraultii. The carapace of the specimen from which Perrault took his 
original description is still in the Paris Museum ; it is that of a male, about 32 inches 
long. Unfortunately the sternum is lost, so that the French herpetologists could not 
be aware that this species belongs to that division of the genus Testudo which they 
distinguished by the presence of eleven sternal scutes only. However, quite apart from 
the consideration of the sternal characters, the detailed description in the ' Erpetologie 
generale' offers sufficient evidence of the close affinity of this T. indica or perraultii 
with our Mauritian species : " la suscaudale simple, tres-elargie ; la derniere de la 
rangee vertebrale bombee," are two of the most striking features of the carapaces from 
Mauritius. 
A second carapace, with epidermoid scutes, 16 inches long, preserved in the Paris 
Museum for more than a century, and without known history, was described by 
ScHWEiGGEE as Testudo tahulata, var. africana, in the year 1812*, and recognized by 
Dumeril and Bibron as a distinct species, Testudo grayi. This is likewise a Mauritian 
Tortoise ; and as it has the same undulated vertebral profile as the carapace sub- 
sequently described in this work as possibly belonging to T. triserrata^ these two indi- 
viduals may eventually have to be referred to the same species. 
For the present I must be satisfied with having thus indicated the natural affinity of 
Testudo indica and T. grayi with the Mauritian species described from osseous remains ; 
but a much more complete series of carapaces (and, indeed, of carapaces with their 
skulls and other parts of the skeleton) will be required before we can venture to 
decide whether or not those two species are identical with the species distinguished in 
this work. A carapace with so straight a vertebral profile as that delineated and 
described of T. perraultii is not represented among the specimens collected by Messrs. 
Bouton and Newton. 
The Mauritian Tortoises were inferior in size to those of Aldabra and Rodriguez, the 
majority of the remains belonging to individuals with carapaces from 2 to 3 feet long; 
specimens above this size must have been exceedingly rare. 
In making the collections mentioned above, no care was taken to keep separate 
such of the bones as were found in juxtaposition, and which, therefore, might reason- 
ably have been presumed to belong to the same individual. Hence it would be most 
difficult (nay, impossible) to avoid errors, if we were to attempt to specifically group the 
modifications which can be observed in almost all the different kinds of bones ; and it 
will be the safer plan to adopt in their description an analytical method — that is, to 
take up the various kinds of bones in their natural succession and to describe the 
modifications of each. Perhaps, in a few instances, it will be possible to indicate the 
specific unity of the types thus distinguished f . 
* Konigsb. Arch. Naturwiss. i. p. 322. 
t In a preliminary notice published in ' Nature,' 1875, p. 297, before I had access to Mr. Newton's collec- 
tion, I had not fully realized the difficult}' of referring each modification of bono to its proper species ; and, 
more especially, I fell into the error of referring to T. boutonii a humerus which proves to belong to T. inepta. 
G 2 
