STORY OF THE CHAMELEON 
There is a popular belief that the chameleon lives entirely upon air. 
The reason for this belief was found in the facts that the chameleon is a 
very sluggish creature and goes so long without eating that people who had 
observed it were led to- think, first, that it could not move fast enough to 
catch insects, which would naturally be its food, and secondly, never having 
seen it eat they imagined it never did. 
The chameleon does not live upon air alone, but principally upon flies 
and small insects, but nature has equipped it with a peculiar tongue especially 
adapted to catching its food. The chameleon’s tongue is a hollow tube capable 
of being extended to a great length with lightning like rapidity. At the end 
is a fleshy knob which has a cup-like cavity in its outer surface, and this is 
always covered with a sticky secretion. When the chameleon has selected 
a fly for its prey, it rolls its strange-looking eyeballs, and then its tongue 
darts out to twice the length of its body and is redrawn like a flash with 
the fly on the end of it. It rarely misses its aim. 
The chameleon is a member of the lizard family, and is pleasing to the 
sight. 
It has long been famous for its power of changing color—a property, 
however, which has been greatly exaggerated, as I shall show. The usual 
color of the chameleon when in its wild state is green, from which it passes 
through the shades of violet, blue and yellow, of which the green consists. 
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