NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 143 



LETTER XIII. 



April 12&, 1772. 



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 1st November I 

 remarked that the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began 

 first to dig the ground in order to the forming its hyber- 

 naculum, 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 copula- 

 tion. 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 13th 

 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 a 

 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 it walks elate, and 

 as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in a 



