OF sp:lbor]ne. 251 



tion 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 assi- 

 duous 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 unfinished. Harsher weather, 

 and frosty mornings, would have quickened 

 its operations. No part of its behaviour 

 ever struck me more than the extreme timi- 

 dity 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 at- 



