THE CHAMELEON. (Chamæleo vulgaris.)
“A lizard’s body, lean and long,
A fish’s head, a serpent’s tongue;
Its foot with triple claw disjoin’d;
And what a length of tail behind!
How slow its pace! and then its hue!”
Merrick.
The Chameleon is a small animal, about ten inches long, and its tail nearly the same length. Its body is covered with small compressed scaly granules; its back is edged, and its tail round, long, and tapering. Its feet have each five toes, which are situated three one way and two another, in order to enable it to lay firm hold of the branches: but wherever it happens that these are too large for the animal to grasp with its feet, it coils round them its long, prehensile tail, and fixes its claws strongly into the bark. When walking on the ground, it steps forward in an extremely cautious manner, seeming never to lift one foot until it is well assured of the firmness of the rest. From these precautions, its motions have a ridiculous appearance of gravity, when contrasted with the smallness of its size, and the activity that might be expected from an animal so nearly allied to some of the most lively in the creation. Though the Chameleon is repulsive in its appearance, it is perfectly harmless. It feeds only on insects, for which the structure of its tongue is well adapted, being long and protrusive, and furnished with a dilated, glutinous, and somewhat tubular tip. With this it seizes on insects with the greatest ease, darting it out and immediately retracting it, with the prey thus secured, which it swallows whole. The strange notion that Chameleons were able to feed on air, seems to have arisen merely from the circumstance of these animals, like all others of the lizard family, being able to subsist for a great length of time without food. The eyes of the Chameleon have the singular property of looking at the same instant in different directions; one of them may be seen to move when the other is at rest, or one will be directed forward, whilst the other is attending to some object behind, or in a similar manner upward and downward. It has the power of inflating its body to double its ordinary size, and at these times it is transparent. It can undoubtedly change its colour, but it is not true that it takes that of any object it may be near. On the contrary, its change of colour depends on its being exposed to a very strong light; and it only changes from its natural dull grey to a beautiful green, spotted unequally with red. Africa is the native country of the Chameleons, of which there are fourteen species; but two of them are found also in different parts of Asia and New Holland, and one (C. vulgaris) in the south of Europe; but this animal has never been found in any part of America.
THE CROCODILE OF THE NILE.
(Crocodilus vulgaris.)
This animal is frequently thirty feet long. The female lays its eggs in the sand, where they are hatched by the heat of the sun; and the mother is said to take no care of the young ones. The head of this species, as of all the true Crocodiles, is twice as long as it is broad; the snout is pointed and unequal, and the eyes, which are small, are placed very far asunder. The colour is a greenish bronze, speckled with brown, and of a yellowish green underneath: six rows of nearly equal-sized plates run along the back. This Crocodile is less ferocious than some of the other kinds, and, when taken young, may be tamed. It is common in Senegal and other parts of Africa, as well as in the Nile.