The toco, or Cuban hornbill, however, devours small reptiles of all sorts, and the West Indian tree lizards have become almost as nimble as squirrels. They dodge behind branches and wait to ascertain the origin of every flitting shadow, but from imminent danger save themselves by a swift descent, followed by a bold leap into the thickets of the underbrush. Their courtship is quite as grotesque as that of the strutting bush pheasants. The males will swing their heads up and down and puff up their throat-bags till their skin seems on the point of disruption, while the objects of their rivalry sit blinking, reluctant to risk an open manifestation of preference. Some gorgeously beautiful varieties are found in Jamaica: greenish-blue, with a metallic luster, and rows of bright crimson spots, as if the design of protective colors had been patterned after the flower shrubs of the tropics.
Iguana.
The word iguana is of Mexican origin, and rarely used in the Spanish West Indies, but the animal itself is—for culinary purposes, though the Haytian negroes do not go quite as far as the mongrels of Yucatan, where iguana farmers fatten the defenseless reptiles with cornmeal, in wickerwork baskets, that are brought to market as a New England poultry fancier would fetch in a crateful of spring chickens. But, prejudice aside, there is no harm in an iguana fricassee; the meat is white and insipid, but takes the flavor of every spice, and is far more digestible than such hyperborean delicacies as fried eels and pork fritters. There are two species—one in eastern Cuba, with spines all the way down to its tail-tip, and in Hayti a smaller one, with a smoother tail, but with an exaggerated throat-bag and wattles like a turkey gobbler.
Lagartos vastecos, or "tree alligators," the Cuban creoles call the scampering forest dwellers, that attain a length of four feet, and can stampede foreigners by leaping to terra firma with an aplomb that scatters the dry leaves in all directions. If chased, they will take to water like frogs. They are first-class swimmers, their throat-bag serving the purpose of a float, and once in the ripple of the stream are hard to keep in sight, as they have a trick of keeping their legs close to the body and navigating by means of their submerged tails. Like the rainbow hues of the coryphene (miscalled dolphin), the bright colors of the iguana soon fade after death, and the shriveled greenish-brown specimens of our taxidermists give no idea of the appearance of the living animal in the sunlight of its native land. The Iguana tuberculata (eastern Cuba) is velvet-green above, with saffron flanks, ringed with blue, black, and brown stripes, and the pet specimens, basking on the porch of a coffee planter, can challenge comparison with the paroquets that flutter about the eaves of the outbuildings like swifts around a martin box.
Cuba has also acclimatized a horned frog, and one species of those curious half-lizards whose shapes may have suggested the dragon fables of antiquity. The "basilisk" (Cyclura carinata) is only half a yard long, but can erect its crest and raise its pronged tail in a manner that will make a dog leap back in affright. It has no goiter-bag, but the skin of its throat is elastic, and can be made to swell out like that of the East Indian cobra, while its multiplex spines vibrate ominously. The little monster is, nevertheless, one of the most harmless reptiles of the tropics, and subsists on succulent leaves, with occasional entremets of small grubs and insects. In that case, however, Nature has rather overdone its efforts at protective ugliness, and the creoles kill the poor simulator of terrors as the Mexican rustics would a horned toad.
A plurality of the zoölogical immigrants of the West Indies seem to have come from Mexico, and it is a suggestive fact that the number of reptiles steadily decreases from west to east. Cuba, with its western headland approaching the east coast of Yucatan, thus came in for a lion's share of lizards, tortoises, and ophidians.
Hayti, though only one fourth smaller, experienced a seventy-five-per-cent discount, and all natives and travelers agree on the curiosum that there is not a single species of serpent on the island of Porto Rico. Trinidad, with an area of only fifteen hundred square miles, but laved by the giant current of the Orinoco, boasts twenty-eight species of land serpents, besides several pythons and swamp vipers. The Trinidad museum of venomous ophidians does not, however, include the dreaded fer-de-lance, which infests the woods near Samana Bay on the south coast of San Domingo. The Bothrops lanceolatus is larger than a rattlesnake, and its bite, though not always fatal, causes fearful inflammation, but its aggressive disposition has been greatly exaggerated. Like most venomous serpents, it is a sluggish brute, relying on its ability to crouch motionless till its prey comes in range, then get in a snap bite and shrink back to wait till the virus begins to take effect, and the victim, in its fever spasms, betrays its helplessness by those eccentricities of conduct which are apt to be misinterpreted by the dupes of the "serpent-charm" superstition.
Fer-de-Lance.