anization is
such, that the atmospheric air which it inhales so generally throughout
every part of its body, distends and projects even its eyes and
extremities. I have frequently seen it after many days fasting become
suddenly plump, and continue so for a fortnight, when immediately it became
nothing but a skeleton of skin and bone.

The tenuity of its body is at these seasons astonishing, the spine of its
back becomes pointed, the flesh of its sides adhere to each other, and
apparently form one united subsance, when it will, in a few hours, at
pleasure, resume its rotund state; and this appears to me to be a most
extraordinary circumstance in the construction of this animal, which
invites the minutest research of the naturalist.

To convince myself how far the assertion might be admitted, that the
cameleon can exist upon air, I have placed them in a cage, so constructed,
as to exclude any thing else, even the minutest insect; when I have visited
my captives, they have opened their mouths and expelled the air towards me
so as to be felt and heard. In the first stage of their privation and
imprisonment, which has continued for more than a month, I have found them
in continual motion around their prison, but afterwards their excursions
became more circumscribed, and they have sunk to the bottom, when their
powers of distension and contraction became languid and decreased, and were
never again capable of performing their accustomed transformation. The one
which I brought to England preserved in spirits, after undergoing upwards
of two months of famine, when I carried it among the grass, or placed it in
the thick foliage of a tree, in little more than a week regained its green
colour, and power of expansion; but not contented with my experiment, and
determined to ascertain it to the utmost, I redoubled my precautions to
exclude every thing but air, and my devoted victim was doomed to another
series of trial, and continued to exist upwards of a month, when it fell a
sacrifice to my curiosity.

The eyes of the cameleon may also be considered a remarkable singularity;
they are covered with a thin membrane, which nature has given it to supply
the want of eye-lids, and this membrane is sunk in the centre by a
lengthened hole, which forms an orifice, bordered by a shining circle. This
covering follows all the motions of the eye so perfectly, that they appear
to be one and the same; and the aperture, or lengthened hole, is alway