82 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



effect of a supply of other succulent vegetables, 

 such as gourds and cabbages, with, a fair propor- 

 tion of lettuce. And yet the " old tortoise" im- 

 mortalized by White selected milky plants, such 

 as lettuces, dandelions, and sow-thistles, as its 

 favorite dish ; and for years continued to retire 

 under ground about the middle of November, 

 coming forth again about the middle of April. Its 

 age was not known, but it had been kept for 

 thirty years in a little walled court ; and in a 

 neighboring village one was kept till it was sup- 

 posed to be a hundred years old. The tortoise 

 introduced into the garden of Lambeth Palace in 

 the time of Archbishop Laud continued to live 

 there till the year 1753, and its death was then 

 attributed to the neglect of the gardener rather 

 than to age. The author of Physico-theology,* 

 to whom the writers of modern treatises are so 

 largely indebted, saw it in August, 1712, " in my 

 Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's garden," and 

 speaks of it as having been there since the time 

 of the prelatef who smoothed the path of the 

 royal martyr from earth to heaven, and received, 

 as the cold complaining eye of the victim was 

 fixed steadily on him, the mysterious " Remem- 

 ber !" from his dying lips. The shell of this 

 tortoise was, and probably is, preserved in the 

 library of the palace at Lambeth. 



White's tortoise for it afterwards became his, 

 to the evident satisfaction of that charming natu- 

 ralist and excellent man when it first appeared in 

 the spring, discovered very little inclination 

 towards food, but in the height of summer grew 

 voracious. As the summer declined, so did its 

 appetite ; and for the last six weeks in autumn it 

 hardly ate at all. Its habits seemed to have 

 differed widely from those of the great tortoises 

 of the Galapagos. They, as we have seen, 

 delighted, after a long abstinence probably, to 

 plunge their heads into the water and to wallow 

 in mud. White's tortoise appears to have lived 

 in positive dread of the element. 



No part of its behavior (writes White) ever 

 struck me more than the extreme timidity it always 

 expresses with regard to rain ; and though it has 

 a shell that would secure it against 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 ex- 

 cellent weather-glass ; for as sure as it walks 

 elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great 

 earnestness in the morning, so sure will it rain 

 before night. 



Darwin's great tortoises marched by night as 

 well as by day in their walks to the wells. 

 White describes his as totally a diurnal animal, 

 and never pretending to stir after it became dark ; 

 and yet he declares that nothing could be more 

 assiduous than the creature, night and day, in 

 scooping the earth and forcing its great body into 

 the cavity intended for its hybernaculum. This, 

 however, it must be remembered, was a work of 

 * Derham. t Juxon. 



necessity, in which delay would have been dan- 

 gerous. Beginning its excavation on the first of 

 November, it had no time to lose, with the biting 

 frosts close at hand ; and if it had been overtaken 

 by them it would have suffered even more than 

 Captain Dalgetty, when he learned the rules of ser- 

 vice so tightly under old Sir Ludovick Lesly that 

 he was not likely to forget them in a hurry : 



Sir, I have been made to stand guard eight 

 hours, being from twelve at noon to eight o'clock 

 of the night, at the palace, armed with back and 

 breast, head-piece, and bracelets being iron to the 

 teeth, in a bitter frost, and the ice was as hard as 

 ever was flint ; and all for stopping an instant 'o 

 speak to my landlady, when I should have gone lo 

 roll-call. 



White's tortoise was careful to avoid the other 

 extreme of temperature : 



Though he loves warm weather, he avoids the 

 hot sun ; because this 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 amid the waving forests of an 

 asparagus bed. But as he avoids heat in the sum- 

 mer, so in the decline of the year he improves the 

 faint autumnal beams, by getting within the reflec- 

 tion of a fruit wall ; and though he never has read 

 that planes inclining to the horizon receive a 

 greater share of warmth, he inclines his shell, by 

 tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit 

 every feeble ray. 



This pet was a huge sleeper ; for it not only 

 remained under the earth from the middle of No- 

 vember to the middle of April, its arbitrary 

 stomach and lungs enabling it to refrain from eat- 

 ing as well as breathing during that time, but 

 slept the greater part of the summer ; for it went 

 to bed in the longest days at four in the afternoon, 

 and often did not stir in the morning till late. 

 Besides, it retired to rest for every shower, and 

 did not move at all on wet days. 



When one reflects (says White) on the stale of 

 this strange being, it is a matter of wonder to find 

 that Providence should bestow such a profusion of 

 days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a 

 reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squan- 

 der away more than two thirds of its existence in 

 a joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for 

 months together in the profoundest of slumbers. 



But notwithstanding this lethargic temperament 

 the old tortoise knew its benefactress, and as soon 

 as the good old lady came in sight, who had 

 waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbled 

 towards her with awkward alacrity, but remained 

 inattentive to strangers. There was too an annual 

 period when he was unusually on the alert. We 

 think we can see the worthy pastor of Selborne 

 looking down, with the air of the melancholy 

 Jaques, on his favorite, and exclaiming : 



Pitiable seems the condition of this poor em- 

 barrassed reptile : to be cased in a suit of ponder- 

 ous armor, which he cannot lay aside ; to be im- 

 prisoned, as it were, within his own shell ; must 

 preclude, we should suppose, all activity and dis- 



