There have been several indications that a large species of tortoise existed in north-central Mexico. The Chihuahuan specimens reported by Duges (248 and 202 millimeters long, respectively) rank in size with the smaller paratypes of _G. flavomarginatus_; Duges stated, however, that the species was said to attain a length of one meter but that he thought such large size surely to apply to another species.
Mr. Charles M. Bogert recently related to me two stories that are here worthy of note. One of them, which Bogert learned from the late Dr. Karl P. Schmidt, concerns a collector who was sent by the Chicago Natural History Museum (then Field Museum) to Coahuila in the early part of the century to obtain materials for a desert exhibit. When the exhibit had been completed several decades later, the collector, visiting the museum, inquired as to where the large tortoises were that he had collected in Coahuila. Dr. Schmidt could find no record of such tortoises and suggested that possibly they had been confused with Galapagos tortoises (_Geochelone_). Dr. Robert F. Inger is unable to locate the specimens or add anything to the story. The collector stated that the large tortoises had been found in only one bolson in Coahuila.
Mr. Bogert further related that, in 1946 when he was camped at Las Delicias, Coahuila, a Mexican mule herder told him of seeing a large tortoise "three bolsons north" of the bolson in which Las Delicias is located (the general area referred to would be near Americanos). The man awoke one morning to find his saddle missing; following tracks from the place where the saddle had been left, the man eventually found it on the back of a large tortoise. The tortoise had apparently sought shelter beneath the saddle and, finding it unsatisfactory, had walked away with the saddle on his back.
Either of the incidents related above, or the reference of Duges (_loc. cit._) to large size, since they are based on second or third-hand accounts, would seem to be unrealistic and of little scientific value when considered alone and at face value. However, in the light of the discovery of _Gopherus flavomarginatus_, these accounts have new meaning and tend to support my proposal that the species is the largest tortoise in North America.