TOETOISE. 149 



time, viz., the 13th or 14th of April, yet, meeting with an 

 harsh reception, and blustering cold north-east winds, they 

 immediately withdrew, absconding for several days till the 

 weather gave them better encouragement. 



LETTEE L. 



TO THE SAME. 



April 12, 1772. 



DEAR SIB, "While I was in Sussex last autumn, my resi- 

 dence was at the village near Lewes, from whence I had 

 formerly the pleasure of writing to you. On the 1st of 

 November, I remarked that the old tortoise, formerly men- 

 tioned, began first to dig the ground, in order to the forming 

 of its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great 

 turf of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore- 

 feet, and throws it up over its back with its hind ; but the 

 motion of its legs is ridiculously slow,* little exceeding the 

 hour-hand of a clock, and suitable to the composure of an 

 animal said to be a whole month in performing one feat of 

 copulation. Nothing can be more assiduous than this crea- 

 ture, night and day, in scooping the earth, and forcing its 

 great body into the cavity ; but, as the noons of that season 

 proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually inter- 

 rupted, and called forth by the heat, in the middle of the 

 day ; and though I continued there till the 13th of 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 



* The motion of the tortoise's legs being, as Mr. White remarks, "ridiculously 

 slow," is taken notice of in Homer's Hymn to Hermes 

 " Feeding far from man, the flowery herb, 

 Slow moving with his feet." REV. J. MITFORD. 



