TESTUDO ANGULATA.
amllana minuta: pectoralia ad marginem antico-externum sinuata: abdominalia
magna, quadrata, ad marginem antico-externum rotondata: femoralia trapezoidea :
analia rhombea, ad marginem testæ superioris ferè attinentia.
Testæ osseæ mensupa.
'V, une. lin.
Longitudo d o r s i 7 2
Latitudo ejusdem .4 &
Longitudo sterni .................................................. 7 0
A ltitu d o ............................................. 2 3*
It is not easy to account for the obscurity which so long hung over this
species, so common as it is in collections, and so frequently brought .alive to
this country. It appears that although Dumeril had affixed: the present
specific name to a specimen in the Paris Museum, it was in Schweiggers Pro-
droinus that it was first described. So little known is this valuable paper,
that Mr. Gray published the species as new in the first Number of his Spici-
legia, under the name of Testudo Bellii.
This tortoise is more pleasing and elegant in its form and colours than most
others. The regular arch of the shell, and the correct form and concentric
furrowing of the plates, are not less remarkable than the pleasing contrast of
the colours, and the perfect regularity of their distribution. The disk of each
dorsal plate is yellow, becoming brownish or pieeous act the areola, and the
circumference a rich deep black. Each of the marginal plates is diagonally
divided into yellow and black, the former occupying the larger portion. The
sternum, during life, is yellow, clouded with a bright vermilion red, which
disappears soon after death ; and there are some blackish radiations Ion each
of the sternal plates. In old age, the sulci become obliterated, the markings
obscure, and the shell somewhat expanded.
The most remarkable peculiarity of this species however, and which distinguishes
it from all others of the terrestrial form, consists in the gular plates
being united into one, with a slightly raised median line; so- that* strictly
speaking, there is but a single gular plate. This is the only exception,
TESTUDO ANGULATA.
amongst the Testudinidæ or land tortoises, to the rule that the sternal plates
are twelve ; and Mr. Gray has considered this character as sufficiently important
to constitute a distinct genus, to which he has given the appellation Cher-
sina; a name already applied by Merrem, though with a different termination,
to the genus Testudo as it now stands. I cannot see the propriety of separating
an individual species from a genus, to the other species of which it is in every
important respect closely allied, and assigning to it a distinct generic rank,
merely on the ground of so slight a distinction as the union or separation of
a pair of scuta. This multiplication of genera, which in such extensive classes
as birds or insects may be necessary and useful, is, in the present case, alike
uncalled for on the score of convenience, and unauthorized by any claims of
natural arrangement.
Mr. Gray suggests that “ T. pusilla Linn, and Daud., and consequently
T. miniata Lacép., appears to belong to this species, which is sometimes reddish
beneath when alive.” This is an amusing allusion, as there is no such
name as miniata applied to a tortoise in Lacépède or in any other writer that
I am acquainted with; but Mr. Gray probably means the “ Vermilion” of
that author. Had he read Lacépède’s own description, he would have seen
that it agrees fully and solely with T. areolata, and that the name “ Vermilion ”
was given to it on account of the red colour of the horny plate over the nose.
“ Sur le sommet de la tête,’t says the author, “ dont on a comparé la forme à
celle d’un perroquet, s’élève une protubérance d’une couleur de vermillon
mélangé de jaune. C’est de ce dernier caractère que nous avons tiré le nom
que nous lui donnons.”
I have received many specimens of this tortoise alive from Madagascar and
from the Cape of Good Hope, and have kept one for more than a year, feeding
in the''summer upon lettuce and other vegetables, and hibernating in a stable
under straw.