to undertake these rambles seem to be of the amor- 

 ous kind : his fancy then becomes intent on sexual 

 attachments, which transport him beyond his usual 

 gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his 

 ordinary solemn deportment.* 



Summer birds are, this cold and backward spring, 

 unusually late : I have seen but one swallow yet. 

 This conformity with the weather convinces me more 

 and more that they sleep in the winter. 



Selborne, April ix, 1780, 



* " We think we see the worthy pastor," writes the late Mr. Brod- 

 erip, " looking down with the air of the melancholy Jaques on his 

 favourite, as those thoughts occur to him. It is very possible that 

 Cupid may have been bestriding the reptile. White's description looks 

 like the restlessness of passion : but the love of liberty, and not im- 

 probably an annual migratory impulse to search for fresh pasture, may 

 have been the prevailing motive. The tenacity of life with which the 

 testudinata are gifted is hardly credible. Rede's operations would have 

 been instant death to any more warm-blooded animal. He opened the 

 skull of a land tortoise, and removing every particle of brain, cleaned 

 the cavity out. It still groped its way about freely, for with the brain 

 its sight departed ; but it lived from November till May. After many 

 other equally cruel experiments, one November he cut off the head of a 

 large tortoise, and it lived for twenty-three days. But, retiring within 

 its shell, it has its privileges. 



" The tortoise securely from danger does well 

 When he tucks up his head and his tail in his shell." 



140 



