THE TORTOISE AND TURTLE. 



'HT > HE tortoise has in all ages been an object of wonder 

 -L to man. Its form, its slowness of movement, its 

 wonderful coat of armour, its power of prolonged fasting, 

 the absence of any apparent pleasure in its existence, have 

 all seemed to set it apart among living creatures. The 

 Orientals, who are profound thinkers, arrived at the con- 

 clusion that the world must be held up on the back of a 

 tortoise, no other creature appearing capable of sustaining 

 the burden. But even their powers of speculation shrank 

 from endeavouring to cope with the inevitable problem: 

 what in that case held up the tortoise ? There was nothing 

 in the habits or customs of the tortoise, as met with on the 

 surface of the earth, that could authorise the supposition 

 that it could, in any state, not only support itself in the air, 

 but hold up the not inconsiderable burden of the earth ; 

 indeed, the problem was evidently so insoluble an one that 

 we meet with no trace in any of the writings of the early 

 pundits that they ever attempted fairly to grapple with it. 



It would certainly seem that nature has been more un- 

 kind to the tortoise than to any other creature. It has 

 given it nothing whatever to compensate for the dulness of 

 its existence or its slow and laborious method of progression. 



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