LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



115 



maeleon, and with some convenient ointment or 

 liquor to make in certain trosches, whereof if a 

 man do carry any in a box of wood about him he 

 shall go invisible." 



In case of invasion, it is satisfactory to know 

 that " whosoever hath about him the right shoulder 

 of the chamaeleon, shall bee able to overthrow his 

 adversarie at the barre, and to vanquish his enemie 

 in the field ;" and we recommend this hint to Sir 

 Francis Head for his second edition ; but remem- 

 ber that, first, " hee must be sure to cast away 

 and make riddance of the strings and sinews be- 

 longing thereto, and to tread them under foot." 



In the ancient pharmacopeia, the chameleon 

 was a perfect repertory of remedies. " Take the 

 ashes," quoth Democritus, " of the left thigh or 

 foot, chuse you whether, incorporate the same 

 with the milke of a sow, and therewith annoint 

 the feet, it wil be an occasion speedily to bring 

 the gout upon them." Doctors differed then, as 

 they do now, for the learned Trallianus prepared 

 from it a most certain medicine for driving the 

 gout away. But however this may be, " of the 

 chamaeleon's gall, for the most part, folk are in 

 manner verily persuaded, that it will rid the pin and 

 web, the cataract also of the eies, with three daies 

 anointing ; chase away serpents if it be dropped 

 into the fire ; gather all wezils in a country to- 

 gether, only by throwing it into the water ; and 

 fetch offhaire if the body be anointed therewith." 

 The catalogue might be extended voluminously ; 

 but these few prescriptions will suffice for those 

 who are not anxious to penetrate into the depths of 

 the sanitary and other mysteries of Democritus and 

 Co. 



That zoologists should have considered this form 

 as isolated, aberrant as it appears to be from the 

 general lacertian structure, cannot be matter of 

 surprise. It seems to stand alone ; but if we 

 closely examine its organization, we shall find 

 that the apparent isolation is merely a modification 

 of different parts adapted to the wants of the ani- 

 mal, and that the sessile chamaeleon is as much a 

 lizard as the nimble Lacerta agilis that vanishes 

 from the sunbeam wherein it is basking before the 

 dazzled eye of the intruder has well made out its 

 colors. The form of the extremities throughout 

 the tribe is exactly fitted to the condition to which 

 it has pleased the Great Disposer to call them, and 

 these conditions we find gradually altered, now 

 dwindling,* now the front pair vanishing,! then 

 the posterior pair obliterated with the front pair 

 tolerably developed,^ till, at last, the whole of the 

 extremities disappear ; and, in the innocent but 

 much-persecuted blind-worm,^ we have a lizard in 

 an entirely serpentine form. 



* Chamaesaura. t Bipes. t Chirotes. 



Anguis fragilis. I have frequently seen this in- 

 nocuous animal put to death as the most poisonous of 

 serpents. The answer to my remonstrances has been 

 that I "knew nothing about it; an adder was bad 

 enough, but this was an asker, with more poison in 

 him than all the rest put together. No one that he 

 bites ever recovers." This last assertion was not far 

 from the truth ; for the harmless creature never bites 

 except what it eats insects and worms. 



Nature is inexhaustible. The wizard conquered 

 the indefatigable demon who "split Eildon Hills 

 in three" in one night, by tasking him to make 

 ropes of sea-sand. According to the usual 

 natural instruments of progression, the task of 

 endowing a creature with rapid motion on the 

 ground without external feet or wings seems 

 hardly less hopeless. Those who have seen a 

 snake rapidly vanish among the herbage, or climb 

 the side of a dry ditch, and escape among the 

 thorns of the hedge, will allow that the task has 

 been most efficiently performed. 



And how ? 



There is a great deal of geometrical neatness and 

 nicety in the sinuous motion of snakes and other 

 serpents, (says good Mr. Derham, canon of Wind- 

 sor, and rector of Upminster, in Essex ;) for the 

 assisting in which action, the annular scales under 

 their body are very remarkable, lying cross the 

 belly, contrary to what those in the back and the 

 rest of the body do ; also, as the edges of the fore- 

 most scales lie over the edges of their following 

 scales ; so as that when each scale is drawn back, 

 or set a little upright by its muscle, the outer edge 

 thereof, (or foot, it may be called,) is raised also a 

 little from the body, to lay hold on the earth, and 

 so promote and facilitate the serpent's motion. 

 This is what may be easily seen in the slough of the 

 belly of the serpent kind. But there is another 

 admirable piece of mechanism, that my antipathy 

 to those animals hath prevented my prying into ; 

 and that is, that every scale hath a distinct muscle, 

 one end of which is tacked to the middle of its 

 scale ; the other, to the upper edge of its following 

 scale. This, Dr. Tyson found in the rattle-snake, 

 and I doubt not is in the whole tribe. 



Certainly ; and Tyson and others, who either 

 had not the Rev. W. Derham's antipathy or con- 

 quered it, did not stop at externals, but went a 

 little deeper into the matter. 



Blasius remarks that the knots of the vertebr 

 of the viper are shorter towards the head, and 

 hence that reptile can easily bend itself both back- 

 wards and sideways. Tyson observes, in his 

 Anatomy of the Rattlesnake, when treating of the 

 vertebrae and the other curious articulations, that 

 the round ball in the lower part of the upper ver- 

 tebra? enters a socket of the upper part of the 

 lower vertebrae, " like as the head of the osfemo- 

 ris doth the acetabulurn of the 05 ischii ; by which 

 contrivance, as also the articulation with one an- 

 other, they have that free mouon of winding their 

 bodies any way." 



In the skeleton of the largest python in th 

 museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of 

 England, which measures sixteen feet six inches 

 in length, there are three hundred and forty-eight 

 vertebrae. Of these two hundred and seventy-nine 

 support free or movable ribs, the rest are caudal ver- 

 tebrae. When the serpent begins to advance, the ribs 

 of the opposite sides are drawn apart from each other, 

 and the small cartilages at the end of them are bent 

 upon the upper surfaces of the abdominal scuta, on 

 which the ends of the ribs rest. The ribs move in 

 pairs, and the scute under each pair is necessarily 

 carried along with it. The scute lays hold of the 



