148 NA TURAL HISTOR Y OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



April i2t&, 1772. 



DEAR 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 hybernaculum, 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 copu- 

 lation. 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 thirteenth of November, yet the work remained unfinished. 

 Harsher weather, and frosty mornings, would have quickened its 

 operations. No part of its behaviour 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 its 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 arbitrary 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 



