XCll.] OF SELBORNE. 251 
Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embarrassed reptile : 
to be cased in a suit of ponderous armour which he cannot lay 
aside ; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his own shell, must 
preclude, we should suppose, all activity and disposition for en- 
terprise. Yet tliere is a season of the year (usually the beginning 
of June) when liis exertions are remarkable. He then walks on 
tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning ; and, traversing the 
garden, examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, 
through which he will escape if possible ; and often lias eluded 
the care of the gardener, and wandered to some distant field. 
The motives that impel him to "undertake these rambles seem 
to be of the amorous kind: his fancy then becomes intent. on 
sexual attachments, which transport him beyond his usual 
gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his oi'dinary solenm 
deportment.^ 
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. 
Selborne, April 21, 1780. 
1 We think we see the worthy pastor," writes the late Mr. Broderip, 
*' looking down with the air of the melancholy Jaqiies on Lis favourite, as 
those thoughts occur to him. It is very possible that Cupid may have been 
bestriding the reptile. White's description looks like the restlessness of 
passion : but the love of libertj; , and not improbably an annual migratory 
impulse to search for fresh pasture, may have been the prevailing motive." 
The tenacity of life with Avhich the testudinata are gifted is hardly 
credible. Rede's operations would have been instant death to any more 
warm-blooded animal. He opened the skull of a land tortoise, and, remov- 
ing every particle of brain, cleaned the cavity out. It still groped its 
way about freely, for with the brain its sight departed ; but it lived from 
November till May. After many other equally cruel experiments, one 
November he cut off the head of a large tortoise, and it lived for twenty- 
three days. But, retiring within its shell, it has its privileges. 
" The tortuise securely from danger does well 
When he tucl<s up his head and his tail in his shell." 
