Jimmy did so.
"Well, I am no wiser. Read it again more slowly."
"I give it up," said Frank. "What a thing it is to be a scientific man!"
"I take it," said Dick, rolling himself along the cabin roof towards them, "that it means that different coloured rays of light have corresponding effects upon coloured atoms in the skin of the chameleon. The rays of light will be affected by the colour of the place where the chameleon is, and the chameleon will be affected by the changed colour of the rays of light, so that if the beast were on a green lawn his colour would be green, and if on a brown tree-trunk his colour would be brown."
"That is my idea," said Jimmy; "but what is the good of using such stilted language, when the same thing might have been said in simple English?"
"I wonder why that water-hen keeps dodging about us in such a fussy manner," said Frank.
"I don't," replied Dick, "for there is her nest not a yard from our bows."
The mooring rope had parted the reeds, and discovered her nest, and Dick, on going to the bows had seen it. It contained twelve eggs, one of which was so light in colour as to be almost white, and one so small that it was only half the size of the others. Dick asked if it were because it was laid last, and if the pale one was so for a similar reason. Frank replied,—
"It may be so in this case, but it does not always happen so. Last year I tried an experiment with a robin's nest. I took out an egg each day, as it was laid, and still the bird went on laying until I let her lay her proper number, five. She laid fifteen eggs altogether, but they were all the same colour and size. So I expect that it is only an accident when the eggs are like these."