68 



Gogga Brown 



not far better to plan and carry out an actual 

 experiment with their somewhat pigmy three-foot- 

 long descendants, and see just how they behaved 

 and led their daily lives ? 



So with this laudable but ambitious object in 

 view this modern Noah built an Ark, and he 

 gathered into it the birds of the air, such as the 

 hawk, the owl and the sparrow ; the beasts of 

 the field, including the hyrax, the hare and the 

 rat ; and everything alive that creeps upon its 

 belly. And in this Vivarium, as he called it, 

 which he had built to elaborate plans and 

 specifications, he kept a series of these large 

 lizards from 1868 to 1914. He sometimes had 

 as many as 40 of these brutes in captivity at the 

 same time, all suitably numbered and registered, 

 and he watched the behaviour of certain individual 

 monitors for as long as 17 years. During the 

 whole period he noted the number of eggs, rats 

 and plucks of meat they ate, and the small 

 fortune he paid out to his grocer and his butcher 

 on their behalf is all on record. 



Although Brown saw to the comfort of his 

 strange pets, and was worried to death when they 

 fell ill or refused to eat, he did not let them forget 

 that they were there to give him useful knowledge 

 in return. So they had to put up with the 

 nuisance of a hawk or an owl to peck at them 



