54. GOPHERUS 



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 



