NOTE -BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 341 



the case of fish. As the eggs are developed the system 

 is drained, till, at last, when they are fully formed, the 

 fish is nearly worthless as food, all its goodness having 

 gone into the roe. In the case of insects — the silk moth,* 

 for example — no sustenance is taken after the worm has 

 woven the shroud, from whose cerements it is to burst 

 forth made perfect. The imago has every sign of a well- 

 filled system, till, in obedience to the great law of nature, 

 the eggs are laid, and the parents having finished the 

 work which they were appointed to perform, die without 

 having any support, save that which they derive from the 

 sun and air. The power of abstinence, even in those 

 warm-blooded animals whose food is not always ready 

 for them — the carnivora, for instance — is very great ; and 

 in the reptiles generally most remarkable. The belief 

 that the chameleon fed on air only was general amongst 

 the ancients. The mode in which it gulps the air for 

 respiration favoured this notion. 



Chameleon hiat, ut tenui depascitur aura, 



Reciprocumque soli per sata carpit iter. 

 Indicat ac varios semper miitatque colores, 



Mutat hians faciem, miitat hians chlamydem. 

 Candidaque indiiitur nunqiiam, nee rubra supellex, 



Semper hiat zephjTOS, semper hiat stimulos. 



And long before these lines were written, the amorous 



Romanf had celebrated the aerial diet and mutability of 



the creature. 



Id quoque quod ventis animal nutritur et aura 

 Protinus assimilat tetigit quoscunque colores. 



Red and white were supposed to be the colours which 



it could never assume, as indicated in the first lines above 



printed. The former colour no one has recorded as 



visible upon the chameleon's skin throughout; but the 



latter has been mentioned both in prose and poetry. A 



vir nobilissimus jide dignus related to Aldrovand, that 



* Phulana mori. f Metam, lib. xv. 



