200 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



most congenial home, and the peculiar locality offered 

 every reasonable facility for studying them. A long-de- 

 sired opportunity was at last mine, and birds and botany 

 were no longer thought of. 



This pretty creature, known as the gray or pine-tree 

 lizard, is also in many localities called the " brown swift " ; 

 and this seems a most appropriate name, as we read the 

 remarks of Holbrook, De Kay, and of Alexander Wilson, on 

 the habits of the creature. For instance, the last named, 

 in his "Ornithology," expresses surprise that a sharp- 

 shinned hawk should have captured one, "as lightning 

 itself seems scarce more fleet than this little reptile." I 

 was not prepared, therefore, to find the " swifts " on the 

 trestle anything but swift. It was by hiding, and not 

 through speed, that they sought to escape, and it proved 

 comparatively easy to capture them with the unaided 

 hand. Often they played bo-peep merely around the 

 timbers, and were readily surprised, so that they ran into 

 one hand as they avoided the other. This proved to be 

 the case, also, when I searched for the lizards in the pine 

 woods, which were as readily captured when up on trees 

 as were those on the trestle. 



The village boys adopted ordinarily the simple plan of 

 using a thread-noose placed at the end of a short stick. 

 Dropping the noose gently about the neck of the lizard, 

 they lifted the creature slightly, when its struggles at once 

 tightened the thread and made it a prisoner. It was a 

 favorite pet with the children, and when I asked some of 

 them if it ever bit or snapped at their fingers, they were 

 greatly amused. I lay stress upon this point, because of 

 the rather widely spread opinion that these lizards are 

 venomous. It is one with the equally absurd impression, 

 due to ignorance and belittling prejudice, that all our 

 snakes are harmful ; but a curious feature in this case is 

 the fact that the impression of the lizard being venomous 



