The weight of this animal is three pounds, and the length of its shell about seven inches. It abounds in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, and particularly in Greece, where the inhabitants not only eat its flesh and eggs, but frequently swallow its warm blood. In September or October it conceals itself, remaining torpid till February, when it re-appears. In June it lays its eggs, in holes exposed to the full beams of the sun, by which they are matured. The males frequently engage ir severe conflicts, and strike their heads against each other with great violence, and very loud sounds. Tortoises attain most extraordinary longevity, and one was ascertained to have lived in the gardens of Lambeth to the age of nearly 120 years. Its shell is preserved in the archiepiscopal palace. So reluctant is the vital principle to quit these animals, that Shaw informs us, from Redi, that one of them lived for six months after all its brain was taken out, moving its limbs, and walking, as before. Another lived twenty-three days after its head was cut off, and the head itself opened and closed its jaws for a quarter of an hour after its separation from the body. It may not only be tamed, but has in several instances exhibited proofs, in that state, of considerable sagacity in distinguishing its benefactors, and of grateful attachment in return for their kindness, notwithstanding its general sluggishness and torpor. It will answer the purpose of a barometer, and uniformly indicates the fall of rain before night, when it takes its food with great rapidity, and walks with a sort of mincing and elate step. It appears to dislike rain with extreme aversion, and is discomfited and driven back by only a few and scarcely perceivable drops.

The following particulars respecting the Instinct of the Tortoise, are copied from Vaillant's Travels in Africa. - "It is very remarkable, that when the waters are dried up by excessive heat, the tortoises, which always seek for moisture, bury themselves under the earth, in proportion as the surface of it becomes dry. To find them, it is then sufficient to dig to a considerable depth, in the spot where they have concealed themselves. They remain as if asleep, and never awake, or make their appearance, until the rainy season has filled the ponds and small lakes, on the borders of which they deposit their eggs, where they continue exposed to the air; they are as large as those of a pigeon; they leave to the heat and the sun the care of hatching them. These eggs have an excellent taste; the white, which never grows hard by the force of fire, preserves the transparency of a bluish jelly. I do not know whether this instinct be common to every species of water tortoises, and whether they all employ the same means; but this I can assert, that every time, during the great droughts, when I wished to procure any of them, by digging in those places where there had been water, I always found as many as I had occasion for. This method of fishing, or whatever else it may be called, was not new to me ; for at Surinam a stratagem of the same kind is employed to catch two species of fish, which bury themselves also ; and which are called, one the varappe, and the other the gorret or the kevikwi."