IN FEATHERS AND FUR, 55 
eyelids all the time. To be sure, there is a hole in the middle, 
where the bright eye looks out, and he can contract or expand it, 
as he likes, but he can't uncover his eyes as we can. 
But his tongue and his eyes are not the only odd things 
about him, — his feet are droll as the rest. He has five toes, just 
as you have, though they are more like a bird's claws than like 
your toes. They are all long and have claws on the ends, and 
then they are fastened together by skin in a curious way. Three 
of them are fastened into one sort of bundle, and the other two 
into another. 
You can see how nicely this arrangement enables him to hold 
on to the branches of trees, where he lives. All four of his feet 
are fixed in the same way. And, as if four such hands and feet 
were not enough, his long slim tail is as good as another foot. He 
can curl it around a branch as a monkey can his, and hold on with 
it. Even when he walks on the ground — which he don't much 
like to do — he steadies himself with this useful tail. 
Everything about this fellow is odd. His skin is not fastened 
tight to him, as it is to most animals. It is more like a loose bag, 
and he can swell it out into queer shapes, or rather into a shapeless 
mass, by filling it with air. And another oddity about this skin is, 
that by a peculiar arrangement of the coloring matter, he some- 
times appears to be one color, and sometimes another, according to 
the way the light strikes him. It is something like what you have 
seen in. changeable silks. 
Funnier still, he can make one side one color, and the other 
side another color. In fact his two sides hardly ever do agree. 
One side will be asleep while the other is awake, and on account of 
this one-sidedness, he cannot swim as most animals can. When he 
is angry, he puffs himself up as big as he can and makes a hissing 
noise. 
Strange stories are told about this curious little fellow, in old 
times. It was really believed that he had no regular color of his 
own, but that he took the color of the thing he was near, being 
green among the leaves and brown on the ground. That error was 
caused, of course, by the changes of color I spoke of. 
Another error was the effect of his curious habit of blowing 
himself up like a bladder It was said that he had no particular 
shape, and that he fed on air. In fact, he had no character of his 
own anyway — neither color nor shape ! 
