ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE 



and by letting their lands at easy rates. But, as soon as the 

 convent was suppressed, the town which it had occasioned 

 began to decline, and the market was less frequented ; the 

 rough and sequestered situation gave a check to resort, and 

 the neglected roads rendered it less and less accessible. 



That it had been a considerable place for size, formerly, 

 appears from the largeness of the church, which much exceeds 

 those of the neighboring villages; by the ancient extent of the 

 burying-ground, which, from human bones occasionally dug 

 up, is found to have been much encroached upon ; by giving a 

 name to the hundred; by the old foundations and ornamented 

 stones and tracery of windows that have been discovered on the 

 north-east side of the village ; and by the many vestiges of dis- 

 used fish-ponds still to be seen around it. For ponds and stews 

 were multiplied in the times of popery, that the affluent might 

 enjoy some variety at their tables on fast-days ; therefore, the 

 more they abounded the better probably was the condition of 

 the inhabitants. 



MORE PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE OLD FAMILY TORTOISE, 

 OMITTED IN THE NATURAL HlSTORY 



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 a ha-ha, but 

 to stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precau- 

 tion. 



Though he loves warm weather he avoids the hot sun ; be- 

 cause his thick shell, when once heated, would, as the poet says 

 of solid armor, " scald with safety." He therefore spends the 

 more sultry hours under the umbrella of a large cabbage-leaf, 

 or amidst the waving forest of an asparagus bed. 



But, as he avoids heat in the 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 



