304 
plint's natfea^l history. 
Book YIII. 
pale colour. It has a little flesh about the head, the jaws, 
and the root of the tail, but none whatever on the rest of the 
body. It has no blood whatever, except in the heart and 
about the eyes, and its entrails are without a spleen.^* It 
conceals itself during the winter months, just like the lizard. 
CHAP. 52. OTHEE ANIMALS WHICH CHANGE COLOUR; THE 
TAEANDTJS, THE LYCAON, AND THE THOS. 
The tarandrus,^^ too, of the Scythians, changes its colour, 
but this is the case with none of the animals which are covered 
wdth hair, except the lycaon^^ of India, which is said to have 
a mane on the neck. But with respect to the thos,^^ (which is 
a species of wolf, differing from the common kind in having a 
larger body and very short legs, leaping with great activity, 
living by the chase, and never attacking man) ; it changes its 
popular poem of the Chameleon. The animal, indeed, assumes various 
shades or tints, but the changes depend upon internal or constitutional 
causes, not any external object, ^lian, Anim. Nat. B. ii. c. 14, refers to 
tlie change of colour, but does not allude to its colour having any con- 
nection with that of the object with which it comes in contact. — B. 
The quantity of muscular fibre and blood in the chameleon is no 
doubt small in proportion to the bulk of the animal, although not much 
less than in other animals of the same natural order; its spleen is very 
minute, as Cuvier says, not larger than the seed of a lentil. — B. 
65 Cuvier remarks, that this account is from the anonymous treatise 
De Mirab. Auscult. p. 1152, and from Theophrastus ; and that it was pro- 
bably derived, in the first instance, from the imperfect account wliich the 
ancients possessed of the reindeer, the hair of which animal becomes 
nearly white in the winter, and in the summer of a brown or grey colour. 
Bekmann, however, who has written a commentary on the above-mentioned 
treatise, supposes that the tarandrus is the elk. Cuvier conceives, that the 
animal described by Caesar, Bell. Gall. B. vi. c. 26, as inhabiting the 
Hercynian Forest, which he designates as " bos cervi figura," is the rein- 
deer; and suggests that tarandrus" may have originated in the German, 
das rennthier. Ajasson, vol, vi. pp. 453, 454 ; Lemaire, vol. iii. pp. 456, 457. 
^lian, Anim. Nat. B. ii. c. 16, speaks of the change of colour in the ta- 
randrus in a way which does not correspond with any animal known to 
exist. — B. Pliny's stories of the tarandrus, thos, and chameleon are ridi- 
culed by Eabelais, B. iv, c. 3. 
66 Cuvier supposes that the lycaon of Pliny is the Indian tiger, which 
has a mane ; but what is said of its change of colour is incorrect. — B. 
Naturalists have differed respecting the identity of the animal here 
described, but Cuvier conceives, that Bochart has proved it to be the canis 
aureus chakal (jackal) of Linnaeus. The description given by Aristotle, 
Hist. Anim. B. ii. c. 17, and B. ix. c. 44, agrees with this supposition ; 
it is also described by Oppian, Halieut. B. ii. c. 615. — B. 
