SIWALIK AND NARBADA CHELONIA. 
11—165 
both the elephant and the tortoise are carried off by a bird, in which Falconer and 
Cautley recognize the Indian Leptoptiliis ar gala, and it hardly requires a much greater 
stretch of imagination to raise this bird to the required dimensions than to elevate 
the existing Indian Manouria emgs (which attains a length of 20 inches) into an 
animal of the bulk of an elephant. 
• 
Genus : non. del. 
The imperfect remains on which the following species are founded do not admit 
of generic determination, although they are of considerable interest as indicating the 
great development wliich the group of gigantic land-tortoises attained in the pliocene 
of India. 
Species 1. 
(About one-hal^ larger than Testudo elephantina.) 
History . — In 1859 FalconeF noticed the epiplastron of a large land-tortoise 
from the Siwalik Hills in the collection of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and 
remarked that it was either specifically or sexually distinct from the type epiplastron 
of the preceding species. This specimen forms the subject of the present notice. 
Epiplastron . — The specimen above-mentioned is figured of one-third the natural 
size in plate XVIII. fig. 4. from the ventral aspect. It comprehends the anterior 
portion of the epiplastron, sliowing nearly the whole of the space occupied by the 
gulars, and part of that by the postgulars. The anterior extremity is somewhat 
damaged, and when complete probably showed a slight bifurcation. Both the dorsal 
and ventral surfaces are convex along the median line. The sutures bounding the 
gular plates form an acute angle, and the portion of the bone in front of the anterior 
termination of these sutures, evidently projected in advance of the rim of the body 
of the plastron : the impressions formed by the sutures between the gulars and post- 
gulars are comparatively shallow. There is no trace of the inferior keel so 
characteristic of the epiplastron of Colossochelys atlas ; and the bone is of medium 
thickness. As the specimen indicates an animal about the size of the smaller 
individuals of the latter species, the length of the carapace was probably about 
6 feet in a straight line. 
Distinctness and affinities . — The present specimen indicates a tortoise with an 
epiplastron about intermediate in character between that of Colossochelys atlas on the 
one hand and Manouria eniys on the other, the production of the gular portion in 
advance of the postgular distinguishing it from Testudo liorsfieldi and its allies ; while 
it is widely distinguished from the gigantic tortoises of the Aldabra group by the acute 
angle formed by the suture between the gulars and postgulars, as well as by its 
greatly superior size. The specimen is so different from the epiplastron of 
Colossochelys atlas that in the absence of any such difference in the two sexes of 
recent tortoises, as well as from the circumstance that the female of that species is 
1 “ Catalogue of Fossil Vertebrata in Mus. of the As. Soe. Beng.,” p. 170, No. 673 (1859). 
