COURTING OF THE CHAMELEON. 143 



you stand. But what is he up to? You quietly 

 watch him, and his employment seems to be of such 

 a nature that he soon completely ignores you, and 

 proceeds with it at all risks, and at all costs. The 

 mystery is soon solved, and we can readily appreciate 

 this agitation, this bowing and strutting, and all man- 

 ner of quaint motions, as if the very last drop of his 

 quaint lacertilian blood was on fire for coyishly, 

 and in all due deference, reclines before his lordship, 

 his chosen mate, exerting all her chamseleonic pow- 

 ers to hide her blushes by vain endeavors to match the 

 colored pattern of her couch, with all the bronzes and 

 browns at her command. He can withstand her 

 charms no longer, and for the moment, laying aside 

 all dignity, and the object of his affections not un- 

 willingly submitting, in the next instant finds herself 

 in the passionate embraces of her lord, who, to make 

 sure that he has actually won his coveted prize, winds 

 about her lithe form, perhaps in some mystic love- 

 knot, his entire caudal extremity, and blinds her eyes, 

 first on one side and then on the other, by the ex- 

 tension of the flaming ornament at his throat."* 



The owner of the clearing, who is plowing potatoes 

 as I catch bugs and lizards, informs me that an alli- 

 gator, four feet in length, was killed by the train on 

 yesterday. It had crawled upon the trestle across 

 Thompson's Creek, a half mile northwest from Or- 



*American Naturalist, XVII, 1883, p. 925. 



