XCII.] 



OF SELBORNE. 



251 



Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embarrassed 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 en- 

 terprise. Yet there is a season of the year (usually the beginning 

 of June) when his exertions are remarkable. He then walks on 

 tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning ; and, traversing the 

 garden, examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, 

 through which he will escape if possible ; and often has eluded 

 the care of the gardener, and wandered to some distant field. 

 The motives that impel him to undertake these rambles seem 

 to be of the amorous kind : his fancy then becomes intent on 

 sexual attachments, which transport him beyond his usual 

 gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn 

 deportment. 1 



Summer birds are, this cold and backward spring, unusually 

 late : I have seen but one swallow yet. This conformity with 

 the weather convinces me more and more that they sleep in the 

 winter. 



SELBORNE, April 21, 1780. 



1 " We think we see the worthy pastor," writes the late Mr. Broderip, 

 " looking down with the air of the melancholy Jaques on his favourite, as 

 those thoughts occur to him. It is very possible that Cupid may have been 

 bestriding the reptile. White's description looks like the restlessness of 

 passion : but the love of liberty, and not improbably an annual migratory 

 impulse to search for fresh pasture, may have been the prevailing motive." 

 The tenacity of life with which the testudinata are gifted is hardly 

 credible. Rede's operations would have been instant death to any more 

 warm-blooded animal. He opened the skull of a land tortoise, and, remov- 

 ing every particle of brain, cleaned the cavity out. It still groped its 

 way about freely, for with the brain its sight departed ; but it lived from 

 November till May. After many other equally cruel experiments, one 

 November he cut off the head of a large tortoise, and it lived for twenty- 

 three days. But, retiring within its shell, it has its privileges. 



" The tortoise securely from danger does well 

 When he tucks up his head and his tail in his shell" 



