100 LAND TORTOISE. 



seem to have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a 

 person with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs 

 near Brighthelmstone. No doubt you are acquainted with the 

 Sussex downs. The prospects and rides round Lewes are 

 most lovely. 



As I rode along near the coast, I kept a very sharp look- 

 out in the lanes and woods, hoping I might, at this time of the 

 year, have discovered some of the summer short-winged birds 

 of passage crowding towards the coast, in order for their 

 departure ; but it was very extraordinary that I never saw a 

 redstart, white-throat, black-cap, uncrested wren, flycatcher, 

 &c. ; and I remember to have made the same remark in former 

 years, as I usually come to this place annually about this time. 

 The birds most common along the coast, at present, are the 

 stone-chatters, whinchats, buntings, linnets, some few wheat- 

 ears, titlarks, &c. Swallows and house-martens abound yet, 

 induced to prolong their stay by this soft, still, dry season. 



A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a 

 little walled court belonging to the house where I am now 

 visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, 

 and comes forth again about the middle of April. When it 

 first appears, in the spring, it discovers very little inclination 

 towards food ; but, in the height of summer, grows voracious ; 

 and then, as the summer declines, its appetite declines; so 

 that, for the last six weeks in autumn, it hardly eats at all. 

 Milky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are its 

 favourite dish. In a neighbouring village, one was kept till, 

 by tradition, it was supposed to be an hundred years old, an 

 instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile ! * 



* In the library of Lambeth Palace, is the shell of a tortoise, brought 

 there in 1623; it lived until 1730, and was killed by being carelessly 

 exposed to the inclemency of the weather. Another, at the episcopal 

 palace at Fulham, procured by Bishop Laud, in 1628, died in 1753. One 

 at Peterborough was known to have lived to the extraordinary age of 

 two hundred and twenty years ! 



During the hybernation of animals, a temporary stagnation or suspen- 

 sion of active life ensues : their temperature becomes diminished, and the 

 circulation of the blood slower ; respiration less frequent, and sometimes 

 entirely suspended ; the action of their stomach and digestive organs are 

 also suspended ; and the irritability and sensibility of the muscular and 

 nervous powers are greatly diminished. Heat and air are the only agencies 

 which rouse them from their death-like lethargy. Judging from the 

 circumstance of toads*, lizards, and bats, being found alive in solid rocks, 

 and in the centre of trees, this torpidity may endure the lapse of ages, 

 without the extinction of life. Mr Murray, in his Researches in Natural 

 History, says, " a toad was found, under the coal seam, in the ironstone 



