Some curious Animal Weapons. 79 
times laughed at other specifies used by the vulgar, 
but which now have honourable places in the phar- 
macopoeia—pepsine, for example. More than two 
centuries ago (very ancient times for South America) 
the gauchos were accustomed to take the lining of 
the rhea’s stomach, dried and powdered, for ailments 
caused by impaired digestion ; and the remedy is 
popular still. Science has gone over to them, and 
the ostrich-hunter now makes a double profit, one 
from the feathers, and the other from the dried 
‘stomachs which he supplies to the chemists of 
Buenos Ayres. Yet he was formerly told that to 
take the stomach of the ostrich to improve his diges- 
tion was as wild an idea as it would be to consume 
birds’ feathers in order to fly. 
I just now called Ceratophrys ornata venomous, 
though its teeth are not formed to inject poison 
into the veins, like serpent’s teeth. It is a singular 
creature, known as escuerzo in the vernacular, and 
though beautiful in colour, is in form hideous beyond 
description. The skin is of a rich brilliant green, 
with chocolate-coloured patches, oval in form, and 
symmetrically disposed. The lips are bright 
yellow, the cavernous mouth pale flesh colour, the 
throat and under-surface dull white. The body is 
lumpy, and about the size of a large man’s fist. 
The eyes, placed on the summit of a dispropor- 
tionately large head, are embedded in horn-like pro- 
tuberances, capable of bemg elevated or depressed 
at pleasure. When the creature is undisturbed, the 
eyes, which are of a pale gold colour, look out as 
from a couple of watch towers, but when touched 
on the head or menaced, the prominences sink down 
