290 NATURAL HISTORY 
MORE PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE OLD FAMILY 
TORTOISE. 
BEcAvsE we call this creature an abject reptile, 
we are too apt to undervalue his abilities, and de- 
preciate his powers of instinct. Yet he is, as Mr. 
Pope says of his lord, 
‘“Much too wise to walk into a well,” 
and has so much discernment as not to fall down 
an haha, but to stop and withdraw from the brink 
with the readiest precaution. 
Though he loves warm weather, he avoids the 
hot sun, because his thick shell, when once heated, 
would, as the poet says of solid armour, “scald 
with safety.” He therefore spends the more sultry 
hours under the umbrella of a large cabbage-leaf, 
or amid the waving forests of an asparagus bed. 
But, as he avoids the heat in summer, so, in the 
decline of the year, he improves the faint autumnal 
beams, by getting within the reflection of a fruit- 
wall; and, though he never has read that planes 
inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of 
warmth,* he inclines his shell, by tilting it against 
the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray. 
Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embar. 
rassed reptile : to be cased in a suit of ponderous 
armour which he cannot lay aside; to be impris- 
oned, as‘it were, within his own shell, must pre- 
clude, we should suppose, all activity and disposition 
for enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year 
* Several years ago a book was written, entitled, ‘ Fruit- 
walls Improved by inclining them to the Horizon,” in which the 
author has shown, by calculation, that a much greater number 
of the rays of the sun will fall on such walls than on those which 
are perpendicular. 
