Crocodiles, Turtles, and Lizards. 29 



painted room." These are poets of the non-natural-history 

 category, and supreme amongst them are the Eliza Cooks 

 of verse. As, for instance, " Bat and lizard had allied, With 

 mole and owlet by their side ; " or " The dark retreat of 

 lizard, frog, and speckled snake;" or "The gloomy owl and 

 speckled lizard." 



Shelley is especially fond of the lizard simile, and having 

 in Greece and Italy had these beautiful creatures constantly 

 under his eye, uses them in his verse with exquisite felicity, 

 although at times with a "large license." Notable is the 

 fidelity of his attaching the idea of "light" to the sudden- 

 flashing thing. It is "sparkling" "glittering" "and the 

 green lizard and the golden snake, Like unimprisoned 

 flames out of their trance awake." 



Now, whimsical though it may seem, I should like to 

 draw passing attention to the curious community of epithet 

 which all these creatures enjoy. 



We have " speckled " lizard with the owl, and the lizard 

 with the "speckled snake," and the latter with the owl. There 

 is the " painted " lizard and the owl, also " the painted snake 

 and the owl." Then we read of " gay lizards glittering," arid 

 "serpents glittering, with gay hues adorned." The "green 

 gilded snake " glides on the tomb, and the "green lizard and 

 gilded newt " do the same on a ruin. A third has "a green 

 gilded lizard." I could go on to tedious length, but my 

 object in this brief paragraph is only to suggest that poets 

 are immoral in lumping diverse creatures together in order 

 to convey a particular impression. The mid-day lizard and 

 the nocturnal owl are of course as absurd in association 

 as the land lizard and the water newt. 



Allan Ramsay has a poem on " Twa Lizards," which is 

 zoologically interesting, though the moral is dull enough 

 after Spenser. Of two lizards basking on a bank, one 

 regrets their mean estate, and cites the existence of 

 crocodiles on the Nile, which are worshipped in " pagods," 



