1883. ] On the Habits of the American Chameleon. 923 
side of the trunk and out of your sight... At this moment per- 
haps the thought seizes you to effect his capture, and you spring 
forward to head him off; but in his cunning he has outgeneraled 
you, he is nowhere to be seen on the sides of the rugged old 
trunk; so for a more general inspection, you back away a few 
steps, when, to your surprise, far above your head you behold 
him stretched out along the first horizontal limb that extends 
from the main trunk. Who would believe it though; who would 
take him for the same nimble little fellow that had just escaped 
us! He is now almost completely clothed in a complete suit of 
bright green, his crimson gular pouch protruding and retracting, 
reminding one of the opening and shutting of some tropical but- 
terfly in the noon-day sun. At other times, when the surround- 
ing circumstances seemed to demand it, he would have donned a 
coat made up of irregular patches of the two colors, with their 
various shades, at his command. This power of protective mim- 
icry on the part of Anolis, for as an example of this we must 
certainly regard it, serves him best when he resorts, which he 
frequently does, to the bright green stalks of certain fresh-water 
reeds and plants that are found growing luxuriantly about the 
bayous and canals of his native haunts. It was in some such 
locality as this, that, the other day, I observed one of the prettiest 
examples of this very same protective resemblance, that one 
would care to witness, almost equal to that famous butterfly that 
Wallace so admirably figures in his work upon the Malay Archi- 
pelago, now so familiar to all of us. 
I had just scrambled over one of these so-called canals, that 
divided, by the aid of an old fence, an extensive marshy tract from 
a deserted field; this field was overgrown, in addition to various 
other kinds of undergrowth, with a tall, bright green, ribbon-like 
grass. As I pushed my way into this, a shower of grasshoppers 
arose, making off in every direction ; by accident, however, I dis- 
covered that two species did not resort to this mode of escape. 
One of these was of a shade of green that nearly matched the 
grass in question, the other, larger, was about the shade of the 
grass after it was dead and dried by the sun. They both had 
about the same form; the head was long and pointed in front, its 
apparent length onan by the insect bringing its antennz to- 
gether and sticking them out straight forward. Behind, the 
wrinkled wings trailed out to a sharp point, like the pointed ex- 
VOL. XVII.—to, Ix, 62 
