TESTUDO PARDALIS.
T esta ossea mensura.
ped. unc. tin.
Longitudo d o r s i .................. .........................i 5 0
Latitudo, e ju s d em .............. .........................0 i i 0
Altitudo..................... .........................0 8 5
Longitudo s t e r n i ............... .........................i 3 0
It is surprising that a species of Tortoise at once so beautiful and of so large
a size, inhabiting, too, a region so much frequented by travellers, should have
so long remained unknown to naturalists. The first specimen noticed was one
which I kept alive for about a year and a half; it had in the summer months
the range of a small orchard, where it fed heartily on grass, which if appeared
to prefer to any other food, and which it plucked with a sidelong movement
of the head, exactly similar to that of a goose. The neck was so remarkably
long and extensile, that the head could be easily raised much above the level
of the top of the back, and thus the animal was enabled to look round on all
sides, merely by turning the head; a peculiarity which I have never observed
in any other species. After its death I opened it, and found it filled with an
immense number of eggs, of all sizes from that of a pin s head to that1 of a pigeon’s
egg. There was'no appearance of shell even on the "largest, and they ’were
probably not a third of their full size: I believe there could not be lefe than
two hundred in all.
This is the largest known species of land Tortoise, excepting Testudo indica,
which it very much resembles in general form, and even in the details of the
plates. Besides the great difference in the colour, however, the areola; of the
costal plates in the present species are placed close to the upper margin, whilst
in T. indica they are central.
I am inclined to believe that Seba’s figure,, referred to in the list of synonyms,
and copied by ShaW under the name of Testudo elegans, maybe the very young
of this species.