NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 123 



LETTER XIII 



April iitft, 1772. 



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

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

 merly the pleasure of writing to you. On the ist November 

 I remarked that the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began 

 first to dig the ground in order to the forming its hybernacu- 

 lum, which it had fixed on just beside a great tuft 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 ridicu- 

 lously 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 its 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 

 1 3th November, yet the work remained unfinished. Harsher 

 weather, and frosty mornings, would have quickened its oper- 

 ations. No part of its behavior 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 its 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, feeding with great 

 earnestness in a morning, so sure will it rain before night. It 

 is totally a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it 

 becomes dark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbi- 

 trary stomach as well as lungs ; and can refrain from eating 

 as well as breathing for a great part of the year. When first 

 awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in the autumn before it 

 retires: through the height of the summer it feeds voraciously, 

 devouring all the food that comes in its way. I was much 

 taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do it kind 

 offices ; for, as soon as the good old lady comes in sight who 



