captain. There is evidence from letters that Charles Darwin was aware that Wickham had these tortoises, as he sent a letter to Huxley in 1860 informing him that he should speak with Wickham in Paris about the last of the tortoises from the 1835 expedition because he had them. This makes it at least possible that the three tortoises at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens were personally collected by Darwin. It is thought that as many as 40 tortoises were stowed aboard Beagle. Some were slaughtered for food, others were kept as souvenirs by crew members, a few as scientific specimens. Once Beagle returned to England, the care of these large creatures became burdensome, so they were adopted by a local museum. There is no evidence that Darwin kept any of them as a pet in his home. Harriet's species That the species Harriet represents was not from one of the islands visited by Darwin is not actually problematic. Darwin definitely collected tortoises on San Cristobal, San Salvador, and Santa Maria; however, the species on Santa Maria (C. n. niger) was, in fact, already nearing extinction when Darwin visited the islands, having been killed and eaten by prisoners on the prison colony there. Yet Darwin still collected tortoises on Santa Maria: the tortoises he found had been retrieved by the prisoners from other islands for food and Darwin collected some of these before they reached the stewpot. Hence they were a mixture of subspecies from a number of islands. Harriet, as a C. n. porteri, is from Santa Cruz. One of the other tortoises (Tom) is still in the Queensland Museum and has been identified as a C. n. chathamensis (from San Cristobal). Other theories about Harriet An initial analysis of Harriet's DNA was unable to identify her subspecies in a cross section of 900 animals representing 26 extant and extinct populations. After reanalysis she was assigned to C. n. porteri. However, her genetic diversity and other factors in her DNA sequence data indicated she was most likely at least two generations removed from the oldest specimens of her species in the dataset. The oldest C. n. porteri in the dataset were collected as adults in 1907 and, hence, this would require Harriet to be hatched by 1860. This dating rules out many alternate possibilities for Harriet as, prior to 1900, Australia was a very difficult place to get to. There