38 
NATURAL HISTORY JOTTINGS IN NATAL. 
Feb., 1892. 
fixed on it, and slid down to the ground with a bump. From 
there I was unable to reach it with a stick, so had to content 
myself with throwing an empty bottle at it, and making it 
glide away into the thick of the bush. On almost any of the 
larger trees may be seen dozens of bright red millipedes, 
about two inches long, that curl up and fall to the ground 
when touched ; and quite as numerous are the large shiny 
black ones, of which I have had specimens quite six inches 
long. Basking in the sun, on the trunk of a tree, the blue¬ 
headed lizards will often be seen ; but they, like many more 
things, are far more beautiful in life, for when dead they lose 
nearly all the lovely blue colour of the head and neck that 
makes them so conspicuous as they dart round the branches 
in endeavouring to keep out of sight. 
We have several kinds of lizards, from a wee little thing 
—about two or three inches long, that runs about on the 
walls and fences in pursuit of unwary flies—to what is called 
the iguana, one of which I have seen five feet long from the 
nose to the tip of the tail. They are not iguanas, but 
monitors, as they have no crest on the back or tail, and no 
teeth on the palate, and, as far as I know, there are no iguanas 
here. I had a live one brought to me some time ago, and 
after killing it, and working for five hours scraping to get the 
flesh away from the skin, I stuffed it; and it now hangs over 
my bed. While out in the bush one morning, a young com¬ 
panion shot at one with his catapult, and happened to strike 
it in the eye and stun it; and when we tried to kill it with 
sticks, it whisked its tail about like a whip lash, and it was 
only after I had broken its skull and my net stick too, that it 
at last succumbed. It is said that they will give a nasty bite, 
and I can quite believe it, as they have a row of fine sharp 
teeth in each jaw. 
In walking through the bush paths, or along the bed 
of a stream, it is no uncommon thing to feel something 
across your face like a fine string, and it was quite a sur¬ 
prise to me to find that it was only a spider’s web, for 
although I have read of their webs being strong enough to 
support the weight of an umbrella, I had hardly believed it; 
but I can assure you that some of the webs—I do not mean 
a single thread, but a tangled mass of web—are quite strong 
enough to do so. A more unpleasant thing, when walking 
beneath the trees, is to hear a buzzing round your ears and 
feel a sharp pricking, and look up to see that you have shaken 
a branch on which hangs a wasp’s nest, and on which the 
wasps were sitting motionless until you disturbed them. I 
have often noticed them resting on their nests, apparently 
doing nothing, but as my observations have been rather 
