WILD LIFE 95 



if they were not subject to this singular infirmity. 

 But the lizard is not so easily overcome with terror, 

 or hypnotised if any one prefers that word, as the 

 frog; nor does he appear so weak on the high 

 downs as I have found him on the heaths of Hamp- 

 shire and Surrey. He is so alert, and quick to vanish 

 into cover at the slightest alarm, that it is not nearly 

 so easy to experiment with the lizard as it is with 

 the frog. It is in fact exceedingly difficult, and fifty 

 lizards may be found and not one will wait quietly 

 to be experimented on. But my experience is that 

 when a walking-stick is thrust snakewise through the 

 grass or heath towards the basking lizard, he at once 

 begins to suffer mysteriously in his brightness and 

 vigour, and his efforts to escape become feebler while 

 the hidden imaginary enemy steals after him. On 

 the downs I found that the stick thrust towards the 

 lizard in many instances did not produce the debili- 

 tating effect ; but the little creature, instantly changing 

 his habits, ran quickly to and up a bush. One that I 

 had frightened with my stick amused me by emerging 

 on the top of a furze bush, and sitting there, high as 

 my breast, and safe from snakes as he perhaps thought, 

 curiously eyed me with his bright bird-like little eyes. 

 This then is our alert and elusive little lizard's 

 weakness, and though I have occasionally played on 

 it for fun during the last two or three summers, I 

 pitied him, and was almost sorry that I had found it 

 out. 



