I CANNOT refrain from drawing attention to the cruelty with which these inoffensive creatures are often treated with regard to their food. One constantly hears the remark, “We had a tortoise for a few months, but it died.” Either from carelessness or ignorance the poor tortoise is hardly ever properly fed, and, though it can endure privation for a longer time than most creatures, yet unless food is supplied it must die miserably of starvation at last. The ordinary land-tortoise feeds on cabbage, sow-thistle, lettuce-leaves, and dandelion flowers, while some specimens will enjoy bread and milk as well. I have been carefully watching a tame one in my conservatory, and find that, day after day, he eats a lettuce nearly half his own size. If, then, he requires so much food to keep him in health and vigour, how pitiable must be the condition of those kept without food, or those that are perhaps offered a dandelion flower once a week!

The water-tortoises are equally ill-used, for often from lack of knowledge they are constantly offered vegetable diet which they cannot eat, their proper food being the live creatures they find in the water they exist in. They are best fed in captivity by supplying them with little portions of raw meat, or remains of boiled cod or turbot. They are easily distinguished from the land-tortoises by their livelier movements, and by their being able to swim in water. Still even they do not care to be always afloat, so there should be a piece of cork or some small island upon which they can rest when they are tired of swimming.

One day I saw on a shelf in a village shop a handsomely marked tortoise-shell, which I rather desired to purchase for my museum. Upon inquiry I found it had been bought for a few shillings from a man who was going through the village with a truck-load of these poor creatures for sale. The shopkeeper knew nothing about the requirements of his new acquisition, and thought it would be quite happy in the water-butt, where he placed it for the night. It being a land-tortoise, it was of course found dead in the morning—one of the many victims of well intentioned ignorance. Those who sell tortoises in the streets know nothing about their habits, they only want to get rid of their stock as quickly as possible. The purchasers may never even have seen a tortoise before, and have not, as a rule, the vaguest idea of how it should be treated, so that the unfortunate creatures are almost sure sooner or later to perish miserably of mismanagement and starvation.

They are entirely vegetable feeders, so that the idea that a tortoise will clear the kitchen of black-beetles is an absurd fiction, though it is, I believe, urged by street sellers of tortoises as an inducement for the householder to purchase his stock.

One day a tortoise was brought to me by a man who said he had picked it up in one of my fields. I felt sure it must have strayed from its rightful owner, and we therefore made every inquiry amongst our neighbours round about in order to discover, if possible, its previous home. As no one would own the tortoise, we placed it in the conservatory that we might be able to observe its ways and habits, as it happened to be the first specimen of the kind that had been enrolled amongst my pets. When placed on the lawn for exercise the creature would greedily snap off every hawkweed flower he came to, and as these abounded in the turf he had happy times feasting on flowers and basking in the sun.

After keeping the tortoise about a year, it happened that a policeman living in a neighbouring village called here to see a friend of his, and this comrade (one of my gardeners) took him to see the flowers in the conservatory. After a few minutes the policeman exclaimed, “Why, there’s our Jack!” An explanation ensued, and it turned out that the tortoise had really belonged to him, as he proved by showing a little hole he had bored through the shell in order to tether Master Jack and prevent his straying away. The tortoise had been the gift of a dear friend, and the loss of this pet had been quite a sorrow in the family. “My missus will cry for joy at seeing Jack again,” said the man; and very glad was I to restore the truant to his rightful owner, whose pet he had been for four years.

Although somewhat slow and inert, a tortoise is quite worth keeping, and when well cared for, properly fed, and taken notice of, it has a good deal of a quaint sort of intelligence. The one I now possess will feed from my hand, gives an angry hiss when offended, will put on double quick speed, when the door is opened, in order to elope into the garden, and what mind he has is greatly exercised about the lemurs. I judge this because I so often find him gazing at them through the wirework, his shell tilted at an angle as if he would fain climb up to satisfy his curiosity.

To the poor people who often visit my place in summer, many of whom have never seen such a creature before, the tortoise is an object of surprise, not unmixed with fear, for one woman asked if he would “fly at her,” and others seem to suppose him a creature of ferocious tendencies, judging by the way they keep at a distance and eye him askance.

I happened to be at the Zoological Gardens one autumn day when some of the large Galapagos tortoises were fairly active, and was fortunate enough to see one digging a hole in a rather hard gravel path. The excavation was carried on entirely by the hind legs; first one and then the other went down and grasped a few stones with the claws on the foot; these stones were dropped on the surface of the ground, and down went the other leg, and slowly it brought up a little soil, and this process went steadily on for ten minutes or more, and the hole became about eight or nine inches deep. The sturdy tail of the tortoise is used as a sort of boring instrument in first beginning the hole, and when deep enough the tortoise cautiously deposits her eggs at the bottom of the cavity, and when all are laid the hole is filled up with earth, well pressed down, and the mother leaves her precious deposits to be hatched by the heat of the sun.

Gilbert White has remarked upon the tortoise as a weather prophet. He says, “As sure as it walks elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in the morning, so sure will it rain before night.” I can confirm this statement from my own observation, and when my tortoise walks in a weak sort of fashion, as if his limbs had no strength, it is a sure presage of fine weather. I frequently see another habit in my pet which is noticed in White’s “Selborne”: “He inclines his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray.” The sun shines upon the floor of my conservatory in different places according to the time of day, and my tortoise “improves the shining hour” by seeking these pleasant sunny spots and basking in them in rotation as the day goes on.

A young dove that is allowed to fly about in my conservatory is remarkably fond of the tortoise, and may often be seen sitting on its back and pluming itself; it stays there whilst the tortoise walks about, apparently quite unaware that it is carrying an “outside passenger.”

In the Japanese islands these creatures grow to an enormous size. I possess a shell which is highly polished and ornamented with gold lacquer work; the measurement of it is three feet one inch by three feet four inches across, and, as these animals live to an immense age, this specimen may probably be several hundred years old.

As each year appears to be marked by a ring round each plate of the tortoise-shell, much as one sees them in a section of tree stem, it might have been possible to reckon the age of my huge shell, but in polishing the surface the rings have been effaced, so its age can only be conjectured.

Let it not be forgotten that a tortoise is a thirsty creature, and needs to have access to water in some very shallow pan out of which it can drink. My own specimen knows well the sound of falling water, and goes beneath the hanging baskets in the conservatory after the gardeners have soaked them, and there enjoys the dripping moisture, drinking from the pools upon the tiled floor.

The shell of a tortoise should be well oiled every few weeks, as it is apt to grow too dry, and might be liable to crack or peel off, the artificial life the creature leads in confinement tending to have a desiccating effect upon the shell.

If each reader of this book would kindly tell those who possess tortoises the kind of food they require it would greatly tend to reduce unintentional cruelty.