NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 251 
similarity of feelings between the two depeorxor! for so the Greeks 
called both the shell-snail and the tortoise.* 
Summer birds are, this cold and backward spring, unusually 
late: I have seen but one swallow yet. This conformity with 
the weather convinces me more and more that they sleep in the 
winter. 
* We take the following information from the note to this chapter in Mr. Bennet’s edition. 
The tortoise died in the spring of 1794, and the shell of it was preserved, and at the time 
Mr. Bennet wrote his notes (1836), it was in the possessicn of Mrs. White, and a woodcut 
is given of it. Professor Bell, whose authority regarding the ¢estadzzata is the best in this 
country, if not elsewhere, refers it to the Zestudo marginata, a species not uncominon in 
Greece and the Mediterranean; but Mr. Bennet, upon a careful examination and com« 
parison of the shell of the Grecian species, thinks that he recognised dist:ncticns that would 
entitle it to a separate name, and he has applied to it that of its owner. We shall rejoice if 
this can be established, which we have not at present materials to prove or disprove, and 
would therefore leave it to Professor Bell. The vignette is from the figure of the 7. 
marginata in Pror. BELL’s Testudinata. 
