Tortoise
in zoölogy, a name formerly taken to include all the Chelonians, but now, unless qualified by an adjective, confined to the individuals of the family GIANT TORTOISE Testudinidæ. Tortoises, in the wider sense, are sluggish reptiles, long-lived, and extremely tenacious of life under adverse surroundings, and have survived from remote antiquity, while higher animal types, formerly contemporaneous with them, have become extinct, and have been succeeded by very different forms.
They have an osseous exoskeleton, which is combined with the endoskeleton to form a kind of bony case or box in which the body of the animal is inclosed, and which is covered by a coriaceous skin, TORTOISE or, more usually, by horny epidermic erally convex (the carapace), and a ventral piece, usually flat or concave (the plastron), by some regarded as an abnormally developed sternum, while others consider the bones of which it is composed as integumentary ossifications. All the bones of the skull, except the lower There are no teeth, and the jaws are beak. Tongue, thick and fleshy; heart perfect. The lungs are voluminous, and All will pass prolonged periods without food, and will live and move for months after the removal of the entire brain.
The most familiar example of true or land tortoises is the dry land terrapin of the Southern States (see TERRAPIN). It is found in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, and is said to range as far N. as Switzerland and the S. of France. It is about 12 inches long; the scales are granulated in the center, streaked on the margins, and spotted or marbled with black and yellow. A suc- SKELETON OF TORTOISE culent vegetable diet is common to the whole family, and all but the tropical an article of food in the S. of Europe, and the flesh of all the species appears to be good, while their eggs are regarded forms are gigantic tortoises formerly found in great numbers in the Mascarene and Galapagos Islands. Five species of TORTURE this group are known, and two of them, tortoise of Aldabra, and T. abingdonii, Testudo elephantina, the Abingdon Island tortoise, grow to na , the gigantic land enormous size. used by the ancients, formed by the In military terms, a method of defense, troops arranging themselves in close order and placing their bucklers over their heads, making a cover resembling a tortoise shell; a TESTUDO (q. v.).