TORTOISE. 287 



MORE PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE OLD FAMILY 

 TORTOISE. 



BECAUSE we call this creature an abject reptile, we 

 are too apt to undervalue his abilities, and depreciate 

 his powers of instinct. Yet he is, as Mr. Pope says 

 of his lord, 



" Much too wise to walk into a well ;" 



and has so much discernment as not to fall down an 

 haha, but to stop and withdraw from the brink with 

 the readiest precaution. 



Though he loves warm weather, he avoids the hot 

 sun ; because his thick shell, when once heated, would, 

 as the poet says of solid armour, " scald with safety/' 

 He therefore spends the more sultry hours under the 

 umbrella of a large cabbage leaf, or amidst the waving 

 forests of an asparagus bed. 



But as he avoids the heat in summer, so, in the 

 decline of the year, he improves the faint autumnal 

 beams, by getting within the reflection of a fruit 

 wall ; and, though he never has read that planes 

 inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of 

 warmth *, he inclines his shell, by tilting it against 

 the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray. 



Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embar- 

 rassed reptile : to be cased in a suit of ponderous 

 armour, which he cannot lay aside ; to be imprisoned, 

 as it were, within his own shell, must preclude, we 

 should suppose, all activity and disposition for enter- 



* Several years ago a book was written entitled, " Fruit walls 

 improved by inclining them to the horizon ;" in which the author 

 has shown, by calculation, that a much greater number of the 

 rays of the sun will fall on such walls than on those which are 

 perpendicular, 



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