NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 351 



Pliny, who quotes the Greek, goes on to inform us, that 

 the same Democritus 



Telleth us a tale, that if one burn the head and throat of the 

 chamseleon in a fire made of oken wood, there will immediately 

 arise tempests of rainy stonnes and thunder together : and the 

 liver will do as much (saith he) if it burne upon the tiles of an 

 house. As for all the other vertues which the said author ascribeth 

 to the chamajleon, because they smell of witchcraft, and I hold 

 them meere lies, I will overpasse them all, unlesse they be some 

 few for which he deserveth well to be laughed at, and would 

 indeed be reproved by no other means better. 



And yet the critic, in his eighth book, gravely informs 

 us, that ' the raven, when he hath killed the cham^eleon, 

 and yet perceiving that he is hvirt and poisoned by him, 

 flieth for remedy to the laurell, and with it represseth 

 and extinguisheth the venom that he is infected withalL' 

 Others relate that if a crow tasted the flesh of the reptile, 

 he was a gone crow. 



Nevertheless, it is recorded that the inhabitants of 

 Cochin China find them good meat, — ^by a process of 

 cookery, however, somewhat similar to that directed by 

 Mizald, when he instructs his scholars ' how to roast and 

 eat a goose alive,' and after dwelling upon every parti- 

 cular of the diabolical process, winds up by declaring 

 that ' it is mighty pleasant to behold !' The hapless 

 chameleons were brought, we are told, to the Cochin 

 Chinese market tied together in a string. The purchasers 

 took them home, made a fine clear fire, unbound their 

 chameleons, and then put them into the burning fiery 

 furnace, where they at first endeavoured to walk on the 

 glowing coals, but overcome with agony, fell down, were 

 well broiled, taken out, their skins pulled off, and their 

 caro candidissmiui minced fine, stewed in butter, and 

 served up : idque epularum genus apud ipsos in lau- 

 tisshnis ccenis coinniendcdiir. Ude was but a plagiarist 

 in the matter of the eels, after all. 



It may be worth knowing in these days of semi-Thug- 



