LETTER XIII 1 



TO THE SAME 



April I2t/i, 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 men- 

 tioned, began first to dig the ground in order to the form- 

 ing 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 copulation. 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 un- 

 finished. 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 



1 This is also a continuation of Letter XI in the original MS. [R. B. S.] 



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