ORDER CHELONIA. 6l 



will rain before night. It is totally a diurnal animal, and 

 never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. 



'' The tortoise, as well as 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. I was much taken 

 with its sagacity, in discerning those that do it kind offices ; 

 for as soon as the old lady comes in sight, who has waited on 

 it for more than thirty years, it hobbles towards its bene- 

 factress with awkward alacrity, but remains inattentive to 

 strangers. Thus not only * the ox knoweth his owner, and 

 the ass his master's crib,' but the most abject and torpid of 

 beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched 

 with the feelings of gratitude. This creature not only goes 

 under the earth, from the middle of November to the middle 

 of April, but sleeps great part of the summer ; for it goes to 

 bed in the longest days at four in the afternoon, and often 

 does not stir in the morning until late. Besides, it retires to 

 rest for every shower, and does not move at all in wet days. 

 When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a 

 matter of wonder that Providence should bestow such a waste 

 of longevity on a reptile that appears to relish it so little, as to 

 squander away more than two-thirds of its existence in a joy- 

 less stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in 

 the profoundest of all slumbers. Though he loves warm 

 weather, he avoids the hot sun, because his thick shell, when 

 once heated, would, as the poet says of solid armour, ' scald 

 with safety.' He therefore spends the more sultry hours 

 under the umbrella of a large cabbage-leaf, or amidst the 

 waving forests of an asparagus bed. But as he avoids heat 

 in the summer, so in the decline of the year, he improves the 

 faint autumnal beams, by getting within the reflexion of a 

 fruit-tree wall ; and, though he has never read that planes 

 inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth, he 



