Miscellaneous Papers. 385 



assistants, succeeded in collecting a few; and that the reptile can 

 subsist and keep fat on about four square meals a year. In the 

 absence of his favorite food while in captivity he manages to get 

 along with ordinary hen-fruit. But he won't even look at cold- 

 storage eggs; they have to be of the yellow-legged kind and smell- 

 ing of the hen-coop. He, of course, much prefers the eggs of his 

 ancient enemy, the desert tortoise ( Testudo agassizi), or the rarer 

 eggs and young of those tidbits of the desert, the Arizona quail 

 and plumed partridge ( Callipepla squamata and Oreorlyx pictus) ; 

 even the eggs of the golden pheasant {Chrysolophus ptctvs) would 

 not be amiss; but he has to do witliout all these and be content 

 with just common hen-eggs. 



"This creature is of very ancient lineage; his family tree is much 

 older than that of any of us. He, or, rather, his ancestors, have en- 

 graved their chirographic inscriptions on the plastic newly- molding 

 shores of the old Carboniferous rivers and the yielding banks of the 

 old red sandstone; and they in turn have conferred upon him their 

 colors, which, as you see, have become permanent." 



-25 



