THE TORTOISE. 241

There are many other species, but these will suffice as
examples.

The habits of the tortoise in a state of domestication are
amusingly described by Gilbert White, in his ‘ Natural His-
tory of Selborne:’ “A land-tortoise, which has been kept
for thirty years in a little walled court belonging to the
house where I am now visiting, retires underground about
the middle of November, and comes forth again about the
middle of April. When it first appears in the spring it dis-
covers very little inclination towards food, but in the height
of summer grows voracious, and then, as the summer de-
clines, its appetite declines, so that for the last six weeks in
autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as lettuces,
dandelions, and sow-thistles, are its favourite dish.” In a
neighbouring village one was kept till, by tradition, it was
supposed to be a hundred years old—an instance of vast
longevity in such a poor reptile. In another letter he says,
“On the Ist of November I remarked that the old tortoise
began first to dig the ground in order to the forming of its
hybernaculum, which it had fixed upon just beside a great
tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its front
feet, and throws it up, over its back, with its hind; but
the motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding

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