THE LIZARDS, 



provide for his maintenance. Here, clutching a twig, as if 

 he were the fruit that grew on it, he lives his strange life of 

 motionless meditation. Till a late hour in the morning he 

 sleeps, sounder than a ramoosee or choivkeydar ; nothing will 

 wake him. At this time his hue is a watery greenish yellow. 

 When the sun begins to warm the world, then colour slowly 

 comes back to his reviving limbs, and he appears in a dark 

 earthy brown. 



Through the day this is his livery, varied sometimes with 

 specks of white and sometimes with streaks ; but when the 

 afternoon shoots its slanting rays through the bars of his 

 cage, surrounding him with chequered light and shade, then 

 he catches the same thought and comes out in vivid green 

 with leopard spots upon his sides. Then, when night comes 

 on, the same deathlike paleness again overspreads his tor- 

 pid frame. Philosopher as he is, the chameleon requires food, 

 and since he is too slow to go after it, he brings it to him. 

 As his ball-and-socket eyes roll this way and that way, one 

 of them marks a large white butterfly walking up the bars 

 of his cage, and he forms a purpose to eat it. He unwinds 

 his tail, then relaxes the grasp of his broad palms one at a 

 time (for he is extremely nervous about falling and breaking 

 his bones), and so he advances slowly along the twigs until 



4 



