the Sussex downs, wherever there were shrubs and 

 bushes, from Chichester to Lewes ; particularly in 

 the autumn of 1770. 



Selborne, March 15, 1773. 



LETTER LI. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



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 ist 

 of November I remarked that the old tortoise, for- 

 merly mentioned, began first to dig the ground, in 

 order to the forming its hybernaculum, 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 13th of November, 



179 



