340 LEAVES FROM THE 



its strict fast day after day, and yet day after day I hoped 

 this long fast would be broken, and did not like to 

 abandon it. I was the more anxious to get it to feed, 

 because it was full of eggs in the progress of development, 

 which must have made great demands on its constitution, 

 and I had frequently seen chameleons take insects freely ; 

 of which more anon. One facetious friend would never 

 call it anything but Martha Taylor, in memory, I sup- 

 pose, of the fasting woman of Derbyshire, who, in conse- 

 quence of a blow on the back, fell into such a prostration 

 of appetite, that she took hardly any sustenance, but some 

 drops with a feather, from Christmas, 1667, for thirteen 

 months, sleeping but little all the time. After laying a 

 large number of apparently perfect eggs, my chameleon 

 died ; and Mrs. M. announced the event to me as ' a 

 happy release.' 



Le Bruyn, in his Voyage to the Levant, declares that 

 the chameleons which he kept in his apartment at 

 Smyrna lived on air, adding, however, that they died one 

 after another in a short time. Sonnini, who saw several 

 of them at the entrance of the catacombs at Alexandria, 

 wishing to satisfy himself how long they could subsist 

 without food, employed every precaution to prevent 

 their having any, leaving them, however, exposed to 

 the open air. They lived under these conditions for 

 twenty days, but soon began to dwindle. When they 

 were first caught they were plump, but they soon became 

 very thin. They gradually lost their agility and their 

 colours with their good condition; their skins became 

 livid and wrinkled, and adhered close to the bone ; so 

 that, to use his own expression, they had the appearance 

 of being dried before they ceased to exist. The apparent 

 good condition of my chameleon may have been due to 

 its good plight when I received it; most oviparous 

 animals, at the time when the eggs are in the early pro- 

 cess of formation, being well fed and filled, as we see in 



