OF SELBOKNE 205 



■< 



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

 matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a 

 profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile 

 that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two 

 thirds of it's existence in a joyless stupor, and be lost to all 

 sensation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers. 



While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, 

 with the thermometer at 50, brought forth troops of shell-snails ; 

 and, at the same juncture, the tortoise heaved up the mould, and 

 put out it's head ; and the next morning came forth, as it were 

 raised from the dead ; and walked about till four in the after- 

 noon. This was a curious coincidence ! a very amusing occur- 

 rence ! to see such a similarity of feelings between the two 

 <f>epmiKOL ! for so the Greeks call both the shell-snail and the tortoise. 



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. 



More Particulars respecting the Old Family Tortoise, omitted in 

 the Natural History.^ 



Because we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too 

 apt to undervalue his abilities, and depreciate his powers of 

 instinct. Yet he is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, 



" Much too wise to walk into a well : " 



and has so much discernment as not to fall down an haha ; but 

 to stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. 



Though he loves warm weather he avoids the hot sun ; be- 

 cause 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 reflection of a fruit-wall : and, though he never has read that 

 planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth,^ 



1 [In the original edition this passage was printed at the end of the Antiquities.] d 



2 Several years ago a book was written entitled ' ' Fruit-walls improved by inclin- 

 " ing them to the horizon " : in which the author has shewn, by calculation, that a 

 much greater number of the rays of the sun will fall on such walls than on those 

 which are perpendicular. 



