148 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
[be Ag Ok ee 
TO THE SAME. 
April 12th, 1772. 
DEAR S1R,—While I was in Sussex last autumn my residence 
was at the village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the 
pleasure of writing to you. On the first of November I remarked 
that the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began first to dig the 
ground in order to the forming its hybernaculum, which it had 
fixed on just beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the 
ground with its fore-feet, and throws it up over its back with its 
hind; but the motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding 
the hour-hand of a clock; and suitable to the composure of an 
animal said to be a whole month in performing one feat of copu- 
lation. Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature night 
and day in scooping the earth, and forcing its great body into the 
cavity ; but, as the noons of that season proved unusually warm 
and sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth by the 
heat in the middle of the day; and though I continued there till 
the thirteenth of November, yet the work remained unfinished. 
Harsher weather, and frosty mornings, would have quickened its 
operations. No part of its behaviour ever struck me more than 
the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain; for 
though it has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a 
loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a 
lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first 
sprinklings, and running its head up in acorner. If attended to, 
it becomes an excellent weather-glass; for as sure as its walks 
elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in a 
morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally a diurnal 
animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. The 
tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach as well as 
lungs; and can refrain from eating as well as breathing for a 
great part of the year. When first awakened it eats nothing ; nor 
again in the autumn before it retires: through the height of the 
