INTRODUCTION. 
Neaely all the voyagers of the IGth and 17th centuries who have left accounts of 
their adventures and discoveries in the Indian and Pacific oceans mention the occur- 
rence, in certain isolated islands or groups of islands, of gigantic Land-Tortoises in 
countless numbers. The islands on which they met with these animals, although all 
between the equator and southern tropic, form two most distant zoological stations, 
widely different in their physical characteristics. One of those stations was the Gala- 
pagos Islands ; the other comprised Aldabra (on the north-west of Madagascar), and 
Reunion, Mauritius, and Rodriguez (on the east of that island). But they had this in 
common, that at the time of their discovery they were uninhabited by man, or even by 
any larger terrestrial mammal. Not one of these voyagers ever mentions having met 
with those Tortoises in any other island of the tropics, or in any portion of the Indian 
continent ; and it is not likely that one or the other would not have mentioned the fact 
if he had seen them in some novel locality. In fact the hardy sailors of that period took 
the greatest interest in these animals, which were to them a most important article of food. 
At a time when a voyage now performed in a few weeks took as many months, when 
every vessel, for defence' sake and from other causes, carried as many people as it was 
possible to pack into her, when provisions were rudely cured and but few in kind, 
those tortoises which could be captured in any number with the greatest ease within a few 
days proved to be a most welcome addition to the stock. The animals could be carried 
in the hold of a ship or in any other part, without food, for months, and were slaughtered 
as occasion required, each tortoise yielding, according to size, from 80 to 300 pounds of 
excellent and wholesome meat. Thus we are informed that ships leaving the Mau- 
ritius or the Galapagos used to take upwards of 400 of these animals on board. 
When we consider that these helpless creatures lived for ages in perfect security from 
all enemies, and that nature had endowed them with a most extraordinary degree of 
longevity*, so that the individuals of many generations lived simultaneously in their 
* On this point the testimony is unanimous and not to he doubted; in fact all Tortoises are long-lived. The 
large male Aldabra Tortoise imported for the Trustees of the British Museum from the Seychelles was knoAvn to 
have been kept in the late owner's family in Cerf Island for about 80 years, and is said to have been already 
of large size at the period when it was brought to the Seychelles. It was still growing at the time of its death 
in the Zoological Garden of Regent's Park in the pi'eseut year. Of another example which is living at Colombo 
B 
