He punishes what man rewards.
How different is thy case and mine!
With men at least you sup and dine;
While I, condemned to thinnest fare,
Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'"
Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:—"The raillery at court sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall." [24]
With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see.
It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe, was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:—1. The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even attained the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges. 2. Lacerta Gangetica, unknown to Linnæus, but brought to this country from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator, or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun; and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M. Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal, were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room."
The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue, which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary eyeballs so as to bring them to bear on the doomed object; as soon as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed with the eye.
The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey.