TESTUDO GEOMETRICA.
Testes ossece mensura.
uñé. lin.
Longitudo d o r s i 5 6
Latitudo e ju s d em .................................... 4 4 -
A ltitu d o ................... i ............................. 3 .5
Longitudo S t e r n i ................................... . 5 3
The shell of this elegant species has always been admired as one of the most
favourite ornaments of amateur museums ; but, until of late years, the living
animal had scarcely been known to naturalists. Daudin indeed, complains
that no perfect description had been given of it, as travellers had neglected
to bring home entire specimens either stuffed or in spirit; and Schcepff was
constrained to figure a shell, of which the anterior lobe of the sternum had
been broken away for the purpose of extracting the internal parts, which he
says was the case with every specimen he had seen. Within the last few
years, however, I have possessed many living individuals of various ages, and
have received them from India, from Madagascar, and from the Cape of Good
Hope. I have never been able to keep them alive during the whole winter
in this climate.
The distinctions between this species and T. actinodes are given fully in the
account of the latter. .There is no doubt that the description given by
Lacepede as of Testudo geometrica, was taken from a specimen of T. actinodes.
This is evident from the number of marginal plates which he mentions as
belonging to the species, namely twenty-three, which number is invariable in
the latter, from the absence of the nuchal plate. Daudin describes the true
T. geometrica, but gives the other as a variety.
The error into which Lacepede has fallen, in supposing that this species is
the Hicatee of Browne’s Natural History of Jamaica, is one only of numberless
mistakes which have arisen from the partial knowledge formerly possessed of
these animals, and from a want of giving due consideration to their geographical
distribution. I am not acquainted with a single, species of land or
fluviatile tortoise which can be considered as strictly indigenous to the two
TESTUDO GEOMETRICA.
hemispheres. * Even Testudo Indica, which is found in the Gallapagos Islands,
and at the Cape of Good Hope, as well as in India, must probably be considered
as having reached the two latter localities only through the medium of
commerce, and as being truly indigenous only in the former. The Hicatee of
Browne is doubtless T. tabulata.
Testudo luteola of Daudin is undoubtedly an accidental variety of this
species, and not, as Mr. Gray asserts, a mere shell which had lost the plates.
It is true that the bony shell of this species, when denuded of the plates, is of
a light yellow colour, and there are slight traces of the radiations in a brighter
hue on the surface of the bone; but the figure in Daudin, in which the sulci
of the plates are very evident, as well as the observations of the author, convince
me that it must have been a variety in which the black colour had not
been produced. This is the more probable from the fact that the sternum is
often found almost wholly of a rich yellow colour.