The Elodites, or Elodians, have the toes separate, or rather sepa rately moveable, furnished with crooked claws, most frequently palmated or united at their base by membranes, as in the Duck Tribe among birds; but the transition of these last three families is, so to speak, insensible on the one side between the species of the genus Cistudo, and on the other between Chtlys and all the species generally known as Soft Tortoises.
These last, the Potamites, or Potamiane, have also the toes palmated or connected by membranes ; they have pointed claws, three in number only, on each foot ; their pointed and trenchant beak is constantly furnished externally with folds of the skin, like lips, appendages which have hitherto been only observed in this family. 10 addition their bony carapace is covered with a eoriaceous skin, the edges of which in the greater number remain flexible and floating on the sides of the body.
Family 1. Chersians—Land-Tortoises.
Genera.
Moveable behind, where it is, as it were, articulated 4, Kinixys. 2., Immoveable; four only . . . . . 2, Hontopus. 4 nails on the five, front off moveable . . 3, Pyxis.
6 anterior feet the plastrou innmoveable . . 1, Test ado.
Test udo.—Feet with five toes, hind-feet with four nails only ; cara pace of a single piece ; sternum not moveable anteriorly.
This genus is divided by Meaers.Dum6ril and Bibron into three sec tions or sub-genera : I. Those species which have the posterior portion of their plastron moveable. These correspond with the genera Chersus of Wagler ; Testudo of authors; Chersina of Gray.
2. Those species whose plastron is solid in all its parts, or of a single piece covered with twelve plates.
3. Those species which have the sternum equally immoveable, but covered with eleven horny plates.
These sections embrace twenty-two species In the first section Testudo marginate, Selnepf., and T. Mattrilianica, burn. and Bibr., are placed.
In the second are Testudo Grace, Linn.; T. geometrica, Linn.; 7'. actinodes, Bell ; 7'. pardalis, Bell ; T. suleate, Miller; T. nigrita, Dunn. and Bibr. ; T. radiate, Shaw ; T. tabulate, Walbaunn ; T. carbonaria, Spix ; T. polyphemus, Daud. ; T. Schweiggeri, Gray ; T. elephantine, Dem. and Bibr. ; T. emigre, Quoy and (him. ; T. gigantea, Schweigg.; 2'. Daudinii, Dum. and Bibr. ; T. I'erraultii, Dum. and Bibr.
In the third are T. angulata, Dum. and Bibr. ; T. Graii, Dum. and Bibr.; T. pellastes, Duns. and Bibr. ; and T. Vosmaeri, Fazing.
For an account of the habits 'of Land-Tortoises we turn to the records of two acute aud eloquent observers, whose narratives it would be unjust to give in other words than their own.
White of Selborno thus writes to the Honourable Dairies Barring ton, in April, 1772 :—" While I was in Sussex last autumn, my resi dence was at the village near Lewes, whence I had formerly the pleasure of writing to you. On the let of November I remarked that
the old tortoise formerly mentioned began first to dig the ground in order to the forming its hybernaculurn, which it had fixed on just 'beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore feet, and throws It up over its back with Its hind feet ; hut the :notion of its logs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock. . . . Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature night and day in scooping the earth and forcing its great body into the cavity ; but as the =owl of that season proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth by the heat iu the middle of the day ; and though I continued there till the 13th of November, yet the work remained unfinished. Harsher weather and frosty mornings would have quickened its operations. No part of its behaviour ever struck me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain ; and though it has a shell that would secure it against a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner. If attended to, it becomes an excellent weatherglass ; for as sure as it walks elate, aud as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in the morning, so sure will it rain before night It is totally a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach as well as lungs, and can refrain from eating as well as breathing for a great part of the year. When first awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in the autumn before it retiree : through the height of the summer it feeds voraciously, devouring all the food that comes in its way. I was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do it kind offices ; for as soon as the good old lady comes in sight who has waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbles towards its benefactress with awkward alacrity, but remains inattentive to strangers. Thus, not only 'the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib,' but the most abject reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the feelings of gratitude." In a postscript he adds, that in about three days after he left Sussex the tortoise retired into the ground under the hepaticas.