Letter XIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
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 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 thirteenth of November, yet the work
remained unfinished.
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