PORTRAIT OF “OLD GRANDPA' 
(NYZP) Ralph De Sola, Federal Writers’ Project. 
The charm of this tortoise is illustrated by one which was saved from 
the doom that a Valparaiso restaurant owner was about to mete out, and 
taken to Regent’s Park, London. It developed a zest for buns and would 
rise on its hind legs, mutely begging for this delicacy. 
It is unfortunate that these survivors of so many millions of years of 
change should now be facing extermination. Since the seventeenth century, 
an estimated ten million tortoises have been taken from the Galapagos 
Islands. In 1691, an explorer could write, “Sometimes you see two or three 
thousands of them in a flock, so that it is possible to walk a hundred paces 
on their backs.” But now one is much more likely, when frequenting their 
haunts, to see an equally impressive number of shells and skeletons as 
testimony to their unhappy fate. 
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