42 
Chelonia. 
Table-case, 
No. 21. 
The collection is particularly rich in remains ot Chelomans 
from the Purbeck beds of Swanage, Dorset, the Chalk Gault and 
Greensand of England, the Maestricht beds of Holland, t ie 
Eocene Tertiaries of Harwich, Sheppey, Hampshire, the Isle o 
Wight, and other localities. 
The last surviving species of Clielonian indigenous to England 
was the Marsh Tortoise, JEmys orbicularis, Linn., whose remains 
have been found in fiuviatile deposits of Post-Pliocene age a ^ 
Mundesley and East Wretham Pen, in Norfolk (see “Geol. Mag. 
1879, p. 304) once common over a large part of Europe and still 
living in the South of Europe, in Asia and Algeria. 
Some of the old gigantic land-tortoises (of which a few only 
survive) inhabited Mauritius, the Seychelles, and other islands 
Fig. 56. — Dorsal aspect of the carapace of Platychdys oberndorferi (Wagner). Litho- 
graphic stone =Lr. Kimmeridgian ; Kelheim, Bavaria. 
Chelonia. 
West Cor- 
ridor, No. 5 
on Plan. 
Wall-case, 
No. 11. 
of the Indian Ocean and the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific. 
Like the Dodo, they have been gradually exterminated by the 
hand of man. The largest of the fossil forms (a restored cast 
of which is placed on a stand at the vest end of the Pep tile 
Gallery, and marked Z, on Plan), is the Colossockelys atlas from 
the Siwalik Hills of India. The detached fragments of this 
great carapace are placed in the Wall-case. These old land- 
tortoises, so remarkable for the magnitude they attained, had 
extremely long necks and small heads ; they were all vegetable- 
feeders. 
