OF SELBOBNE. 
173 
tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore 
feet J 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, 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 lady dressed in all her best 
attire, shuflBing away on the first sprinklings, and running 
its head up in a corner. If attended to, it becomes an 
excellent weather-glass ; for as sure as it walks elate, and as 
it were on tip-toe, feeding with great earnestness in a 
morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally 
a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes 
dark. The tortoise, like 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. When first 
awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in the autumn before 
it retires ; through the height of the summer it feeds vora- 
ciously, devouring all the food that comes in its way. I 
was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that 
do it kind offices : for, as soon as the good old lady comes 
in sight who has waited on it for more than thirty years, it 
hobbles towards its benefactress 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 reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes 
Isaiah, i. 3. 
