TESTUDO GEOMETRICA. 
hemispheres. Even Testudo Indica , which is found in the Gallapagos Islands, 
and at the Cape of Good Hope, as well as in India, must probably be con¬ 
sidered as having reached the two latter localities only through the medium of 
commerce, and as being truly indigenous only in the former. The Hicatee of 
Browne is doubtless I tabulata. 
Testudo luteola of Daudin is undoubtedly an accidental variety of this 
species, and not, as Mr. Gray asserts, a mere shell which had lost the plates. 
It is true that the bony shell of this species, when denuded of the plates, is of 
a light yellow colour, and there are slight traces of the radiations in a brighter 
hue on the surface of the bone; but the figure in Daudin, in which the sulci 
of the plates are very evident, as well as the observations of the author, con¬ 
vince me that it must have been a variety in which the black colour had not 
been produced. This is the more probable from the fact that the sternum is 
often found almost wholly of a rich yellow colour. 
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