144 
BLUEFIELDS EIDGE. 
was just around the eyes. I carefully secured, without 
injuring him, and brought him home in the collecting- 
basket, into which I had no sooner put him, than he 
fiercely seized a piece of linen in his teeth, and would 
not let it go for several hours. I transferred him to a 
wired cage, linen and all ; and at length he suddenly 
let go his hold, and flew wildly about the cage, biting 
at anything presented to him. At night I observed 
him vividly green as at first; a token, as I pre- 
sumed, that he had in some measure recovered his 
equanimity. 
The next day he continued very fierce. I hung 
the cage out in the sun ; two or three times in the 
course of the day I observed him green ; but for the 
most part he was black. The changes were rather 
quickly accomplished. 
After he had been in my possession about four 
days, I observed him one morning sloughing his skin ; 
the delicate epidermis, loosened from the body and 
legs, looked like a garment of thin white muslin, 
split irregularly down the legs and toes, and separated 
from that of the tail, on which the integument yet 
adhered unbroken. Throughout the day the loosened 
skin hung about the animal, though more and more 
loosely. He had not abated a whit of his fierceness ; 
leaping at a stick pointed at him, and seizing it 
forcibly with his teeth. 
Another individual, caught in the same locality, 
and by the same device, I introduced into the cage of 
the former, who did not offer any molestation to the 
intruder. After they had remained in my possession, 
the one about six weeks, the other about four, they 
