TESTUDO AREOLATA.
It is of this species that Kolbe says, as quoted by Lacepede and Daudin,
that the eagles of the Cape of Good Hope make their prey, rising with them
in their talons to a great height, and letting them fall upon the rock for the
purpose of breaking their hard shell, to enable them to devour the animal
which it had protected.
It is a species easily familiarized. I have repeatedly had them so tame as to
take food readily from the hand, and even to eat from one hand when held in
the other. I have received them from Madagascar, and frequently from the
Cape of Good Hope. I believe it inhabits the greater part of Africa. The
variety termed by Daudin T. fasciata, was found in Ceylon.
