OF SELBOENE. 173 



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 13th 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 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 attended to, it becomes an 

 excellent weather-glass ; for as sure as it walks elate, and as 

 it were on tip-toe, feeding with great earnestness in a 

 morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally 

 a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes 

 dark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary 

 stomach as well as lungs ; and can refrain from eating as 

 well as breathing for a great part of the year. When first 

 awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in the autumn before 

 it retires ; through the height of the summer it feeds vora- 

 ciously, devouring all the food that comes in its way. I 

 was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that 

 do it kind offices : for, as soon as the good old lady comes 

 in sight who has waited on it for more than thirty years, it 

 hobbles towards its benefactress with awkward alacrity ; 

 but remains inattentive to strangers. Tims not only " the 

 ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," 1 but 

 the most abject reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes 



1 Isaiah, i. 3. 



