THE LIZARDS. 



35 



lizards, like flying foxes, hawk them in the dusky forest ? 

 Did the mild ignanodon, when it has done browsing on a 

 tuft of maidenhair fern about the size, say, of a clump of 

 bamboos, turn round and waddle away into a hole, as its 

 successors do to-day on the plains of Guzerat ? As I see 

 them hurrying to their burrows at the sight of me, and 

 think that possibly when the world was young I might 

 have been glad to rest from the heat of the sun under the 

 shadow of one of their mountainous ancestors, my mind 

 goes back to my ancient Goanese cook. He was only a 

 maislry, or more vulgarly a bobberjee, yet his sonorous name 

 recalled the conquest of Mexico, or the doubling of the 

 Cape. The mouldy beaver in which he went to church 

 seemed to know it, and clung desperately to a worn-out 

 respectability. I could not pass any of those ruins of 

 ancient forts or massive churches which lie around Bombay 

 without feeling as if he were murmuring to himself quorum 

 pars magnet fui. And the fact was that he was thinking of 

 a savoury curry for my breakfast ! 



The lizards likewise are the wreck of a great past. They 

 had their day ; perhaps they abused it ; at any rate the great 

 unresting wheel has gone round, and that which was up is 

 down. The commonalty do not seem to feel it much. 



