A JANUARY DAY AT REGENTS PARK. 13 



of these animals are allowed to expose themselves to 

 the virulence of so frosty and inclement a day. 



The reptile house is always kept at so uniform a 

 temperature that winter's cold or summer's heat makes 

 hardly any perceptible difference. The fine specimen 

 of the North African monitor was in a state of great 

 excitement, endeavouring apparently to climb up the 

 plate-glass front of his cage, and ever and anon falling- 

 back ignominiously, only to resume the attempt with 

 renewed vigour. It was astonishing what a noise the 

 creature made by scratching his claws and rubbing his 

 chin against the glass, and to what unexpected attitudes 

 his lithesome body and slender neck could be writhed. 

 The reptile was shedding ijts epidermis, which hung in 

 shreds and patches from different parts of the body, 

 showing the bright scales beneath as they were freed 

 from their effete covering. The creature was very per- 

 severing in his exercise, continually darting out his 

 long and deeply-cleft tongue, looking, indeed, as if it 

 had been furnished by nature with two slender pointed 

 tongues, and affording an admirable opportunity for 

 studying the arrangement of the beautiful spotted 

 scales on the lower surface of its body. 



Its near neighbour, the rock snake, or pythoness, 

 as it is just now the fashion to call her, was not visible, 

 being, in fact, as well as could be expected under the 

 circumstances, and lying under her blanket, coiled like 

 a shallow cone around her new-born family of eighty or 

 ninety eggs. The chameleons were perched immoveably 



