LETTER XIII. 



To the same. 



April i2th, 1772. 



EAR 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 its hyber- 

 naculum, 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 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 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 



