XXXIV 
Introduction 
twenty years ago, fresh facts have come to his notice. 
Thus his then information led him to infer that Testudo 
Daudinii of the Indian Ocean islands was totally extinct, 
whereas the Hon. Mr. Walter Rothschild possesses at 
least three examples of this species: and quite lately, 
in May 1895, an unusually huge specimen has been 
obtained from one of the Egmont islands 1 —to the north 
of Rodriguez—which has been, we believe, by this time 
added to the Tring collection. 
In order that the readers of the present English edition 
of the Sieur Dubois’ voyages may form an idea of what 
the tortoises seen by that traveller in the seventeenth 
century on the island of Bourbon looked like, a group 
of these gigantic reptiles, from islands within the same 
geographical area, has been purposely photographed for 
their owner, the Hon. Walter Rothschild, by whose 
generosity the highly instructive illustration forming the 
frontispiece has been provided, representing six Chelonians 
from the Aldabra and Seychelles Islands, amongst which 
a small intruding outsider has crept from the mainland of 
Key to Frontispiece the African continent. 
gigantic tortoises at tring park These tortoises were 
photographed, writes 
Mr. Rothschild, ‘ some 
on a large grass-plot 
and the others in the 
Park at Tring. On this 
[composite] photograph 
of the giant land-tor¬ 
toises are two females 
and one male, Testudo daudinii (Dumeril et Biberon), 
1 A description of this tortoise was presented to the Academic des Sciences 
by M. Milne-Edwards, on 9th September 1895 (vide Comptes Rendus , tome 
cxxxi.). The length of carapace of this individual is four feet seven inches, in 
a straight line. Weight of the animal = 240 kilos. = 529 lbs.—say within a 
hundredweight of a quarter of a ton. 
Nos. x, 2, 3, Testudo daudinii ; 4, 5, T. elephan- 
tina; 6 . T. inepta. 
