160 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth by the heat 

 in the middle of the day ; and though I continued there till the 

 1 3th 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 a comer. If attended to, it becomes an 

 excellent weather-glass; for as sure as it 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 summer it 

 feeds voraciously, devouring all the food that comes in its way. I 

 was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do it 

 kind offices ; for, as soon as the good old lady comes in sight who 

 has waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbles towards its 

 benefactress with awkward alacrity ; but remains inattentive to 

 strangers. Thus not only " the ox knoweth his owner, and the 

 ass his master's crib,"* but the most abject reptile and torpid of 

 beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with 

 the feelings of gratitude ! 



I am, etc., etc. . 



P.S. In about three days after I left Sussex the tortoise retired 

 into the ground under the hepatica. 



* Isa. i. 3. 



