2.68 LIZARDS AND CROCODILES AT THE ZOO 
its shoulders like a jacket. The cast skin, which 
was of an exquisite, semi-transparent grey colour, like 
that of a moonstone, was pulled off by the lizard in 
long strips, by the aid of its teeth and feet. The 
toads perform this operation in a far neater manner, 
pulling their cast skins over their heads with their 
hands, as a football-player strips off his jersey. 
Perhaps the tamest, if not the most beautiful among 
the smaller reptiles, are the odd little palm-lizards 
which have recently arrived at the Zoo. They are 
vegetable feeders, and their appetite for cabbage-leaves 
is so keen, and the diet supplied so liberal, that after 
a hearty meal they resemble a well-stuffed oval pin- 
cushion with a small lizard’s head, feet, and tail 
attached to the padding. Yet, even in this condition, 
they are ready to eat if fresh food be offered to them, 
sitting contentedly in the visitor’s hand, and “ swelling 
visibly ” as they munch their cabbage, like the lady 
who excited the alarm of Mr. Weller, senior, at the 
Temperance tea. A near neighbour of the palm- 
lizards is the existing type of the impostor frog, 
who tried to inflate himself to the size of the bullock, 
according to the fable. zEsop’s frog, no doubt, lived 
in the swamps of Lake Copais ; but the strange 
creature, which naturalists have named the “ adorned 
ceratophorus,” but which is nothing but an enormous 
fat round caricature of a frog, with a mouth wide 
enough to swallow a young chicken, lives in South 
America. His daily habit is to bury himself in the 
loose earth where small animals, such as rats, mice, 
