114 NATURAL HISTORY. 



He had also a whimsical sense of the humour that 

 underlies many of the actions of animals, or many of the 

 phenomena of animal life, when viewed from the human 

 standpoint. Take, for example, the account which he 

 gives of 'Timothy/ a large and aged tortoise, which he 

 kept for many years, and the habits of which he observed 

 with the same loving care as he bestowed upon all living 

 beings. ' The old Sussex tortoise,' he writes to his friend 

 the Hon. Daines Barrington, 'that I have mentioned to 

 you so often, is become my property. I dug it out of 

 its winter dormitory in March last, when it was enough 

 awakened to express its resentments by hissing; and, 

 packing it into a box with earth, carried it eighty miles 

 in post-chaises. The rattle and hurry of the journey 

 so perfectly roused it, that when I turned it out on a 

 border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden ; 

 however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried 

 itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed. . . . 

 When one reflects on the state 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 lon- 

 gevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as 

 to squander 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. . . . Because 

 we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt to 

 undervalue his abilities, and to depreciate his powers of 

 instinct. Yet he is, as Mr Pope says of his lord, 



Much too wise to walk into a well ; 

 and has so much discernment as not to fall down a haha, 



