LAND TORTOISE. 



abound yet, induced to prolong their stay by this 

 soft, still, dry season. 



A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty 

 years in a little walled court belonging to the house 

 where I am now visiting, retires under ground about 

 the middle of November, and comes forth again 

 about the middle of April. When it first appears 

 in the spring, it discovers very little inclination to- 

 wards food, but, in the height of summer, grows 

 voracious, and then, as the summer declines, its 

 appetite declines ; so that, for the last six weeks in 

 autumn, it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as 

 lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are its favourite 

 dish. In a neighbouring village, one was kept till, 

 by tradition, it was supposed to be an hundred years 

 old, an instance of vast longevity in such a poor 

 reptile ! 



LETTER XXXIX. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, Oct. 29, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



AFTER an ineffectual search in Linnseus, Brisson, 

 &c., I begin to suspect that I discern my brother's 

 hirundo hyberna in Scopoli's new-discovered hirundo 

 rupestris, p. 167. His description of " Supra mu- 

 rina, subtus albida; tectrices macula ovali alba in la- 

 tere interno ; pedes nudi, nigri ; rostrum nigrum ; re- 

 miges obscuriores quam plumee dorsales ; rectrices remi- 

 gibus concolores ; caudd emarginatd nee forcipatd" 

 agrees very well with the bird in question ; but when 

 he comes to advance that it is " statura hirundinis 

 urbicte," and that " definitio hirundinis ripariae Linncei 



