206 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



But make not too sure. One eye lias ceased its aimless 

 wandering and become earnestly interested in that fly. 

 The chameleon takes one solemn step forward. You are 

 all right for the present, Mrs. Fly ; but let me advise you 

 to be careful and circumspect. That one eye is fixed upon 

 you with an unchanging steady gaze, and the other seems 

 somehow to have lost its interest in its owner's tail, and is 

 beginning to find a new interest in your immediate neigh- 

 bourhood. If once that other eye becomes fixed upon you, 

 take my word for it, you're a doomed fly. Ah ! I thought 

 so. The other eye has come to rest, and holds you in its 

 steady gaze. The chameleon leans forward a little, his 

 mouth slowly opens, twitches once or twice, and quick as 

 thought, with unerring aim, a long worm-like tongue is 

 darted forth and returns to the mouth like a piece of 

 stretched india-rubber. Where is poor Mrs. Fly ? She 

 seems to have disappeared. And Mr. Chameleon is 

 leisurely munching at something which seems to give him 

 some sort of sedate satisfaction. 



A wonderful organ, that tongue. It is about as long as 

 the body of its possessor, measured from the tip of his nose 

 to the root of his tail. It is said that in the villages of 

 Madagascar, a land where chameleons run large, the people 

 always place one on the church steeple to keep the village 

 clear of flies; but I think this must be an exaggeration. 

 Still in sober earnest it is a wonderful organ. It would 

 take me half an hour to explain to you (do not be afraid, I 

 am not going to do so) the muscular mechanism of the 

 chameleon's tongue. It is enough for us to know what 

 the flies know too well, only they soon forget it in death 

 that it is a long elastic organ the expanded tip of which is 

 covered with an exceedingly sticky substance ; that it is 

 fixed near the front of the mouth ; and that it can be jerked 

 forward with startling rapidity, returning at once into the 



