148 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



or fourteenth of April, yet meeting with an harsh recep- 

 tion, and blustering cold north-east winds, they immedi- 

 ately withdrew, absconding for several days, till the 

 weather gave them better encouragement. 



LETTER Xni 



April 12, 1772. 

 Dear Sir, 



While I was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at 

 the village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the 

 pleasure of writing to you. On the first of November I 

 remarked that the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began 

 first to dig the ground in order to the forming its hyber- 

 naculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great 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 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 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 



