Our Lizards. 



" Birds ! birds ! ye are beautiful things, 



With your earth-treading feet, and your cloud-cleaving wings ; 

 Where shall man wander, and where shall he dwell, 

 Beautiful birds, that ye come not as well ? 

 Ye have nests on the mountain, all rugged and stark, 

 Ye have nests in the forest, all tangled and dark 

 Ye build and ye brood 'neath the cottager's eaves, 

 And ye sleep on the sod 'mid the bounie green leaves ; 

 Ye hide in the heather, ye lurk in the brake, 

 Ye dive in the sweet flags that shadow the lake ; 

 Ye skim where the stream parts the orchard-decked land, 

 Ye dance where the foam sweeps the desolate strand. 

 Beautiful birds ! ye come thickly around, 

 When the bud's on the branch and the snow's on the ground ; 

 Ye come when the richest of roses flush out, 

 And ye come when the yellow leaf eddies about. 

 Beautiful birds ! how the schoolboy remembers 

 The warblers that chorused his holiday time ; 

 The robin that chirped in the frosty Decembers j 

 The blackbird that whistled through flower-crown'd June. 

 That schoolboy remembers his holiday ramble, 

 When he pulled every blossom of palm he could see, 

 When his finger was raised as he stopped in the bramble, 

 With ' Hark ! there's the cuckoo; how close he must be!'" 



CHAPTER IV. 



OUR LIZARDS. 



]O great has been the effect of domestication, and 

 the pains that have been taken in their breeding,, 

 that canaries may now be found of almost every 

 hue and colour. " Buffon enumerates twenty varieties," 

 says a writer in the ' Popular Encyclopsedia,' " and many 

 more," he continues, " might probably be added to the 

 list, were all the changes incident to a state of domestica- 



