hereabouts, are the American
fruit-eating species, celebrated for violent quarrelling among
themselves, and for their power of changing colour with great
rapidity. They do not crawl upon the earth, but live on trees, the
fruits of which sustain them. Here, too, are the Anoles, with their
distended toes, that enable them to imitate the crawling feats of the
night lizards. The tenth case devoted to the lizard tribe, is the most
interesting of the series. It contains the family of lizards known as
the Agama. This family boasts many famous scions. First, here are the
Indian dragons; their resemblance to the fabled monster slain by St.
George, consists of a loose skin over the ribs, which they can open or
fold at pleasure. These bat-like wings will not support them in the
air, but serve to steady their bodies when leaping from branch to
branch of a tree. From these lilliputian representatives of the
monster of fable, the visitor's attention will most probably be called
by an important-looking lizard, of which Mr. Allan Cunningham brought
the first specimens to this country, from Port Nelson, Australia. We
allude to the lizard with a frill round its neck, which has been
universally likened to that worn by Queen Elizabeth: it is called the
frilled agama. It is supposed that this harmless sauroid extends this
frill to frighten away its enemies; as old ladies, who can preserve
their presence of mind in the neighbourhood of a bull, open their
umbrella to frighten it into an opposite direction. Under these
interesting sub-families are grouped the varieties of a species of
agama that has won for itself an imperishable reputation--having
furnished imaginative minds with matter for the most extravagant
speculations--and yielded to the political writer abundant sarcastic
images. No politician who has thought proper in the course of a long
career, to change his old principles for new ones (as housewives
exchange worn-out apparel for new gilded pottery); no philosopher who
has by turns embraced conflicting principles of human action; no man
of science who has published two opposite theories of the formation of
our universe, can pause without emotion before this case of classed
Chameleons; for the politician, the philosopher, and the man of
science have inevitably figured in hostile reviews under the head of
colour-changing sauroids. The popular notion respecting the
colour-changing powers of these lizards is, that at will the chameleon