12 LECTURE VII. 



cious; and then, as the summer declines, its appe- 

 tite declines; so that for the last weeks in autumn it 

 hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as lettuces, 

 dandelions, sowthi sties, &c. are its principal food. 

 On the first of November, 1771, I remarked that 

 the Tortoise began to dig the ground, in order to 

 form 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. Nothing can be more assiduous 

 than this creature, night and day, in scooping 

 the earth, and forcing its great body into the ca- 

 vity; 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 re- 

 mained 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 



