OF SELBORNE. 143 



cold north-east winds, they immediately withdrew, abscond- 

 ing for several days, till the weather gave them better encou- 

 ragement. 



LETTER XIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



April 12, 1772. 



DEAR SIR, 



WHILE I was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at the 

 village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure 

 of writing to you. On the first of November I remarked that 

 the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began first to dig the 

 ground in order to the forming it's hybernaculum, which it 

 had fixed on just beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes 

 out the ground with it's fore-feet, and throws it up over it's 

 back with it's hind ; but the motion of it's 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 creature night and day in scooping the 

 earth, and forcing it's great body into the cavity ; but, as the 

 noons of that season proved unusually warm and sunny, it was 

 continually interrupted, and called forth by the heat in the middle 

 of the day ; and though I continued there till the thirteenth of 

 November, yet the work remained unfinished. Harsher wea- 

 ther, and frosty mornings, would have quickened it's opera- 

 tions. No part of it's 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 it's head up in 

 a corner. If attended to, it becomes an excellent weather- 

 glass ; for as sure as it walks elate, and as it were on tiptoe, 



