NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 219 



ber, coming fortli again about the middle of April. Its 

 age was not known, but it had been kept for thirty years 

 in a little walled court ; and in a neighbouring village 

 one was kept till it was supposed to be a hundred years 

 old. The tortoise introduced into the garden of Lambeth 

 Palace in the time of Archbishop Laud continued to live 

 there till the year 1753, and its death was then attributed 

 to the neglect of the gardener rather than to age. The 

 author of Fhysico-theology* to whom the writers of 

 modern treatises are so largely indebted, saw it in August, 

 1712, ' in my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's garden,' 

 and speaks of it as having been there since the time of 

 the prelate! who smoothed the path of the royal martyr 

 from earth to heaven, and received, as the cold com- 

 plaining eye of the victim was fixed steadily on him, the 

 mysterious ' Remember T from dying lips. The shell of 

 this tortoise Avas, and probably is, preserved in the library 

 of the palace at Lambeth. Sir Robert Heron relates 

 that Mr. Reid, near York, had (1827) two water-tor- 

 toises brought over from the siege of Belleisle, which 

 commenced in 1761. One of them having wandered, 

 was missing for sixteen years, and was then found on 

 cleaning out another pond. It appears that both the 

 tortoises were alive and very tame in November, 1850, 

 the date of Sir Robert's privately-printed, but not pub- 

 lished, Notes ; at least no mention is made of their 

 death. 



White's tortoise — for it afterwards became his, to the 

 evident satisfaction of that charming naturalist and ex- 

 cellent man, — when it first appeared in the spring, dis- 

 covered very little inclination towards food, but in the 

 height of summer grew voracious. As the summer de- 

 clined, so did its appetite ; and for the last six weeks in 

 autumn it hardly ate at all. Its habits seemed to have 



* Derham. f Juxon. 



m3 



