TOBT. 366 TORTOISE-BEETLE. Louisiana, whose jurisprudence rests upon a basis of Roman law, civil wrongs are divided into 'ofl'enses,' or illeg-al acts which are done wickedly and with intent to injure, and 'quasi- oli'enses,' or those which cause injur}' to another but proceed from error, neglect, or imprudence. The term 'quasi-tort' has made its appearance in judicial decisions and recent legal treatises, both in England and the United States. It is not used as synonj-mous with the 'quasi ofl'ense' of Louisiana, nor with the 'quasi-delict' of Roman and Scotch law. It designates an act or omis- sion, which subjects the wrongdoer to a contract or to a tort action, at the injured party's option; such, for example, as a merely negligent injury by a common carrier to a passenger. Consult: Hilliard, The Law of Torts (Boston, 1S59) ; Ad- dison, A Treatise on the Law of Torts (London, 1860; Albany, 1870) ; Bishop, Contmeiitarirs on the Xon-Contract Law (Chicago, 1889) : Cooley, The Law of Torts (Chicago, 1895) ; Jaggard, The Law of Torts (Saint Paul, 1895) ; Clerk and Lindsell, The Law of Torts (2d ed., London, 1896) ; Pollock, The Law of Torts (London and New York, 1901) ; Sohm, The Institutes of the Roman Law (O.xford, 1892). TORTOISE, tOr'tus (OF. tortue, tortugue, Fr. tortile, tortoise, from Lat. tortus, twisted, so called on account of its crooked feet; prob- ably influenced its termination by Eng. por- poise). A turtle of terrestrial habits. The term is rather indefinite, but usually dis- tinguishes land chelonians from marine spe- cies, although tortoise-shell is exclusively a marine product, and certain fresh-water turtles. as the terrapins, are commonly spoken of as marsh-tortoises. Its most exact applica- tion is probably to the family Testudinid*, in which the shell is always covered with well- developed horny shields. It includes the ter- rapins or aquatic 'mud turtles' of the genera Emys, Chrysemys, and similar groups, in which the feet are adapted for both walking and swim- ming, and the carapace is often ornamented by gay colors or sculpturings. Many are almost wholly terrestrial, as is the case with the com- mon box-tortoise (see Turtle) of the United States. Near allies are the famous Greek tor- toise of the llediterranean region and many other species of the typical genus Testudo; also the Florida 'gopher' (q.v.). The most important and distinctive members of the group are the gigantic land-tortoises of various oceanic islands, now extinct or nearly so. (See Extinct Anim.ls.) All these belong to the genus Testudo and differ little except in size from the other members of the family. Some of them are not larger than other large turtles, but those most noted greatly exceed any other living forms, although surpassed by the Testudo atlas of the early Pliocene in India, whose shell was six feet or more in length. Others, with shells about four feet in length, were its contemporaries in Europe and in North America. Their representatives survived until a recent date or still live in the Gal.lpagos Isl- ands, Jladagascar, and the Mascarene Islands, but nowhere upon any continent. Specimens of small species have been known to live more than 100 years, and one, at least, more than 150 yertrs. The Madagascar Species {Testudo Grandidieri) became extinct probably before that island was discovered by white men, but at least two species of the Camoros have re- mained until within historic times. One (the elephant tortoise, 'Testudo yiyanlea, see Land Toktoise) is now e.xtinct in its original home, the North Island of Aldabara, but 2)reserved in the Seychelles, and a specimen living in England in 1897 then measured 52 V4 X 50 inches over the curve of its shell, and weighed 358 pounds ; an- other in Saint Helena was more than a century old in 1900. Daudin's tortoise, of South Alda- bara, also survives in small numbers, and several were taken to Europe in 1895, one of which at least 100 years old had a shell 55 inches long. Still largef is a representative alive in Mauri- tius, whose recorded history goes back to 1766, when it had already reached large size ; it is of a species (Stimeirei) native to the Seychelles, to which also belonged the tortoise which lived at Colombo from 1797 to 1898. Several other species, probably or surely extinct, inhabited Rodriguez and other islands of the Indian Ocean, where they were found in abundance b_v the early voyagers and planters, but were slaughtered for food or as curiosities. The Galiipagos Islands had several species of similar gigantic tortoises,one to each island of the archipelago, which differed from the Eastern ones mainly in having longer necks and smaller heads. Some were long ago exterminated by man or by the pigs which Ecuadorans turned loose upon the islands a century ago; others still survive in small numbers, although in 1893 and again in 1898 lai'ge numbers were taken away and dis- tributed to zoological gardens in various parts of the world. New York and Washington getting several old and young specimens. The largest collection of all living species is that at Tring Park, England, where the biggest kno^vn Gala- pagos tortoise (Testudo elephantopus) is one measuring 56 X 49 inches over the curve of its carapace, which was taken from Duncan Island in 1813 to Rotuma, thence to Sydney in 1880, and finally to England. Consult: Giinther, Gigantic Land-Tortoises (London, 1877); Giinther, Proceedings Linnean fiociettj (Presidential address. 1898 — "a fascinat- ing review of the whole complicated subject") ; Gadow, Amphibia and Reptiles (London, 1901) ; Darwin, A Katuralist's Vot/age (London, 1860) ; Report United States National Museum (Wash- ington. 1889). Compare Turtle; and see illus- tration under Land Tortoise. TORTOISE-BEETLE, or SniELO-BEETLE. A leaf-beetle of the subfamily Cassidinae. The adults are rounded convex beetles with a curious marginal expansion of the upper surface, and with the power of withdrawing the head into the thorax, which gives them a resemblance to a tortoise. Their larvfp are flattened, fringed with spines, and the anal end of the body is pro- vided with a forked appendage which is bent for- ward over the back: to this are attached the cast-off skins of the larva and its excrement as a protective covering. A remarkable group of tortoise-beetles, belonging to the genus Por- phyraspis, cover themselves in the larval state with a dense coat of fibres of the palm tree, upon which they live, each of the fibres being many times the length of the insect's body and elabo- rately curved so as to form a round nest under which the larva lives. Many species have a
