54. GOPHERUS 991 
widening at the bottom. They varied in diameter with the 
size of the tortoise that inhabited them, being in every case 
about the shape of a longitudinal, vertical section of the 
animal’s shell. Sometimes the tortoise could be seen lying 
at the inner end of its burrow. In the deeper holes a stick 
thrust in would reveal the presence of the creature which, 
lying partly outstretched, would draw up its feet and head 
when it felt the touch; and this diminution of respiratory 
space beneath the shell would be accompanied by a noisy ex- 
piration like the rapid blowing of a bellows. When seized 
by the back of the carapace to be drawn out the tortoises 
would sometimes stick fast in the holes, hooking their crooked 
front legs into the sand. One deep burrow, otherwise empty, 
contained the broken halves of two white, hard-shelled eggs 
which appeared to have been spherical and about an inch 
in diameter. No brush or food of any kind was found in 
any of the dens. Late in the afternoon of a hot July day 
a large tortoise was surprised in the act of coming out of its 
burrow. When it saw me it turned immediately and ambled 
back to safety. 
“Desert tortoises are said to come out in great numbers 
after thunder-showers. But this is by no means the only 
time of their activity, for they appear to wander abroad at 
all seasons, frequenting rocky and uneven as well as level 
ground. One meets with them plodding steadily across- 
country, occasionally stretching their short necks down over 
the pointed extremities of the plastron and testing the ground 
with the sensitive tip of the snout or stepping aside to crop 
some small annual plant growing in the shade of a boulder. 
Their usual gait does not carry them along at a rate of more 
than four or five miles a day (20 feet a minute by test), and 
they live at such great distances from water that in places it 
would seem impracticable for them to get a drink from one 
year’s end to another. Sometimes when roughly handled a 
