xiv. DWARF LIONS. 207 



mouth, partly by its own elasticity. It is used with unerring 

 precision. I have often taken a chameleon on my finger and 

 shown him fly after fly in succession. He would never 

 strike until he had got both eyes to bear on his prey : and 

 very seldom did he miss, even when thus held on an un- 

 certain support at a somewhat variable distance of five 

 or six inches. 



And then those eyes of his, how strange they are ! 

 Some one has said that they have no more expression than 

 a boiled pea with an ink-spot on it. You must imagine 

 the boiled pea a little rolled out so as to acquire the shape 

 of a blunt cone. The broader base of the cone lies next 

 the head, and in the middle of the rounded apex is the 

 ink-spot and a wonderfully bright ink-spot it is. There 

 seem to be no eyelids. But in truth the skin that covers 

 nearly the whole eye-ball, and forms the green case of the 

 boiled pea, represents the eyelids, which are so fused 

 together as to leave only a small opening the ink-spot 

 through which the bright eye-ball may be seen. This 

 small opening may be diminished or enlarged at will. So 

 that the chameleon has a sort of additional pupil to its eye. 

 You have, I dare say, watched the pupil of your own eye 

 dilate and contract as you looked at it in the looking-glass 

 and varied the intensity of the light. The chameleon has 

 two such pupils to each eye one like yours within the 

 eye- ball ; the other, the ink-spot, formed from the eyelids. 



Not only are the tongue and eyes of the chameleon 

 specially modified in relation to the creature's mode of life, 

 the feet are also specially modified and admirably adapted 

 for grasping the twigs of the plants on which it lives. In 

 the hand there are five fingers of about equal length. But 

 they are most curiously arranged. The first three thumb 

 and first two fingers are all bound together into a bundle 

 by the skin which reaches as far as the claws ; the other 



