and, by an awkward metaphor, implies that the legs are as slender and pliant as if cut out of a thong of leather. Neither Willughby nor Ray, in all their curious researches, either at home or abroad, ever saw this bird. Mr. Pennant never met with it in all Great Britain, but observed it often in the cabinets of the curious at Paris. Hasselquist says that it migrates to Egypt in the autumn: and a most accurate observer of Nature has assured me that he has found it on the banks of the streams in Andalusia.

Our writers record it to have been found only twice in Great Britain. From all these relations it plainly appears that these long-legged plovers are birds of South Europe, and rarely visit our island: and when they do are wanderers and stragglers, and impelled to make so distant and northern an excursion from motives or accidents for which we are not able to account. One thing may fairly be deduced, that these birds come over to us from the continent, since nobody can suppose that a species not noticed once in an age, and of such a remarkable make, can constantly breed unobserved in this kingdom.

SELBORNE, May 7, 1779.

LETTER XCII.

TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON.

HE old Sussex tortoise, that I have mentioned to you so often, is become my property. I dug it out of its winter dormitory in March last, when it was enough awakened to express its resentments by hissing; and packing it in a box with earth, carried it eighty miles in post-chaises. The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden; however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed.

As it will be under my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of enlarging my observations on its mode of life, and propensities; and perceive, already, that towards the time of coming forth, it opens a breathing place in the ground near its head, requiring, I conclude, a freer respiration as it becomes more alive. This creature not only goes under the earth from the middle of November to the middle of April, but sleeps great part of the summer; for it goes to bed in the longest days at four in the afternoon, and

often does not stir in the morning till late. Besides, it retires to rest for every shower; and does not move at all in wet days.

When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in a joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers.

While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, with the thermometer at fifty, brought forth troops of shell-snails; and, at the same juncture, the tortoise heaved up the mould and put out its head; and the next morning came forth, as it were raised from the dead; and walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious coincidence! a very amusing occurrence! to see such a similarity of feelings between the two pspecinos! for so the Greeks call both the shell-snail and the tortoise.*

Because we call "the old family tortoise" an abject reptile, we are too apt to undervalue his abilities, and depreciate his powers of instinct. Yet he is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord,

Much too wise to walk into a well :" and has so much discernment as not to fall down an ha-ha: but to stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution.

Though he loves warm weather he avoids the hot

* Mr. Bell, who possesses the shell of old Timothy, thinks it the Testudina marginata, Schoepff. Mr. E. T. Bennett finds specific variations, which he thinks constitute a new species, and calls it T. Whetée.-ED.

sun; because his thick shell when once heated, would, as the poet says of solid armour-" scald with safety." He therefore spends the more sultry hours under the umbrella of a large cabbage-leaf, or amidst the waving forests of an asparagus-bed.

But as he avoids heat in the summer, so, in the decline of the year, he improves the faint autumnal beams, by getting within the reflection of a fruitwall; and, though he never has read that planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth, he inclines his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray.

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 enterprize. Yet there is a season of the year (usually the beginning of June) when his 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 has 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

in

* Some curious experiments on inclined walls have been published by the Caledonian Horticultural Society, from which it appears that a wall sloping at an angle of 50 degrees, and a vertical one were of the same temperature at 6 April; at 1 o'clock in the day the sloping wall was 7 degrees warmer; at 6 o'clock the same day the sloping wall was only 2 degrees above the vertical wall. In frosty weather, however, the sloping wall was 3 degrees colder in the night. It thus appears that Timothy was justified by science in inclining his shell to the noon-day sun, seeing warmth was his object.-ED.

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 ordinary solemn 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.

"We think we see the worthy pastor," writes the late Mr. Broderip, "looking down with the air of the melancholy Jaques, on his 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 liberty, and not improbably an annual migratory impulse to search for fresh pasture may have been the prevailing motive." The tenacity of life with which the testudinata are gifted is hardly credible. Rede's operations would have been instant death to any more warmblooded animal. He opened the skull of a land tortoise, and, removing every particle of brain, cleaned the cavity out. 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 tortoise securely from danger does well

When he tucks up his head and his tail in his shell."

It