§ III Saurian Reptiles
This is a British species, and is one of the very few reptiles found in Ireland. Its movements are most graceful. It comes out of its hiding-place during the day to bask in the sun, and when it sees an insect it darts like lightning upon it, seizing it with its sharp little teeth, and soon swallowing it. The young are produced in eggs, which are generally hatched the moment they are laid, the skin of the egg being so thin that the young Lizard can be seen through it.
The Green Lizard (Lacerta viridis) is a beautiful creature. Its colours are more brilliant and beautiful than those of any other European species, and exhibit a rich and varied mixture of darker and lighter green, interspersed with specks and marks of yellow, brown, black, and sometimes even red. The head is covered with large angular scales, and the rest of the upper parts with very small ones. The tail is generally much longer than the body. Beneath the throat there is a kind of collar, formed by scales of much darker colour than the rest of the animal.
The Lizard seems occasionally to lay aside its natural gentleness of disposition, but no further than for the purpose of obtaining food. Mr. Edwards once surprised a Lizard in the act of fighting with a small bird, as she sat on her nest in a vine against a wall, with newly-hatched young. He supposed that the Lizard would have made a prey of the latter, could it have driven the old bird from her nest. He watched the contest for some time; but, on his near approach, the Lizard dropped to the ground, and the bird flew off.
The Iguana, (Iguana Tuberculata,)
Which is found commonly in the tropical parts of America, is a large kind of lizard, often measuring four or five feet in length. It has a crest of long teeth, looking like a comb, along its back; its tail is long, tapering, and slender; and beneath its throat it has a sort of pouch which it can dilate considerably. The colour of this lizard is greenish, with brown bands on the tail. The Iguana is found in trees, and feeds chiefly on fruits and other vegetable substances. It is usually caught when reposing upon a branch, and by a very simple process: the hunter approaches it whistling, and the animal is stupid enough to sit still, no doubt enjoying the music, until a noose, attached to the end of a stick, is passed over its head. It is captured for the sake of its flesh, which is regarded as very delicate.
An Iguana, which was kept for some time in a hothouse at Bristol, was fed on the leaves of kidney bean plants, which it devoured eagerly, after refusing every other kind of food that had been offered it. It seems certain that Iguanas in their natural state are not entirely herbivorous, but feed on insects, the eggs of birds, and other animal matter, as well as on plants. They will occasionally take to the water, and seem to swim with ease. Notwithstanding its repulsive and even frightful appearance, the Iguana is perfectly harmless and inoffensive.
The Flying Dragons, those terrible creatures described by the older naturalists, are undoubtedly fabulous and, indeed, impossible creatures, and either entirely products of the imagination of the vulgar, or founded upon specimens manufactured for the express purpose of taking in the naturalist, who, in old times, was a little too ready to believe in wonders of this kind. The wings of a bat attached to a body and legs made up from half a dozen animals would furnish a capital Dragon in former times. Modern naturalists apply the name of Dragon to some little lizards inhabiting the East Indies, and which have none of those terrible qualities ascribed to the fabled monsters of antiquity. They are related to the Iguanas, but have on each side of the body a membranous expansion, stiffened by the prolongation into it of the first six false ribs; this acts as a sort of parachute, and enables the little creatures, not to fly, but to leap or glide through the air to considerable distances between one tree and another. They live entirely in trees, and feed on insects.
“A lizard’s body, lean and long,
A fish’s head, a serpent’s tongue;
Its foot with triple claw disjoin’d;
And what a length of tail behind!
How slow its pace! and then its hue!”
Merrick.
The Chameleon is a small animal, about ten inches long, and its tail nearly the same length. Its body is covered with small compressed scaly granules; its back is edged, and its tail round, long, and tapering. Its feet have each five toes, which are situated three one way and two another, in order to enable it to lay firm hold of the branches: but wherever it happens that these are too large for the animal to grasp with its feet, it coils round them its long, prehensile tail, and fixes its claws strongly into the bark. When walking on the ground, it steps forward in an extremely cautious manner, seeming never to lift one foot until it is well assured of the firmness of the rest. From these precautions, its motions have a ridiculous appearance of gravity, when contrasted with the smallness of its size, and the activity that might be expected from an animal so nearly allied to some of the most lively in the creation. Though the Chameleon is repulsive in its appearance, it is perfectly harmless. It feeds only on insects, for which the structure of its tongue is well adapted, being long and protrusive, and furnished with a dilated, glutinous, and somewhat tubular tip. With this it seizes on insects with the greatest ease, darting it out and immediately retracting it, with the prey thus secured, which it swallows whole. The strange notion that Chameleons were able to feed on air, seems to have arisen merely from the circumstance of these animals, like all others of the lizard family, being able to subsist for a great length of time without food. The eyes of the Chameleon have the singular property of looking at the same instant in different directions; one of them may be seen to move when the other is at rest, or one will be directed forward, whilst the other is attending to some object behind, or in a similar manner upward and downward. It has the power of inflating its body to double its ordinary size, and at these times it is transparent. It can undoubtedly change its colour, but it is not true that it takes that of any object it may be near. On the contrary, its change of colour depends on its being exposed to a very strong light; and it only changes from its natural dull grey to a beautiful green, spotted unequally with red. Africa is the native country of the Chameleons, of which there are fourteen species; but two of them are found also in different parts of Asia and New Holland, and one (C. vulgaris) in the south of Europe; but this animal has never been found in any part of America.
This animal is frequently thirty feet long. The female lays its eggs in the sand, where they are hatched by the heat of the sun; and the mother is said to take no care of the young ones. The head of this species, as of all the true Crocodiles, is twice as long as it is broad; the snout is pointed and unequal, and the eyes, which are small, are placed very far asunder. The colour is a greenish bronze, speckled with brown, and of a yellowish green underneath: six rows of nearly equal-sized plates run along the back. This Crocodile is less ferocious than some of the other kinds, and, when taken young, may be tamed. It is common in Senegal and other parts of Africa, as well as in the Nile.
The method which the African adopts to kill this formidable creature displays considerable ingenuity and courage. Having wrapped a thick cloth round his arm, and provided himself with a long knife, he proceeds to the known haunt, usually a reedy swamp or river. The moment the Crocodile perceives him it rushes at him with open mouth, but is coolly received by its antagonist, who thrusts his covered arm between its jaws. The teeth cannot pierce through the thick folds of the cloth, so that his arm only gets a smart squeeze, and before the creature can disengage itself, he adroitly cuts its throat.
The Gavials have very long, slender snouts, and their hind feet are webbed to the ends of the toes. These animals grow to the length of twenty-five feet, and when large are as dangerous and destructive as the Nilotic Crocodile. They are found abundantly in the Ganges, and in the fresh waters of most parts of India and its islands.
A short time before M. Navarette was at the Manillas, he was told that, as a young woman was washing her feet at one of the rivers, an Alligator seized and carried her off. Her husband, to whom she had been but just married, hearing her screams, threw himself headlong into the water, and, with a dagger in his hand, pursued the robber. He overtook and fought the animal with such success as to recover his wife; but, unfortunately for her brave rescuer, she died before she could be brought to the shore.
The habits of the Alligator are much the same as those of the crocodile. The principal mark of distinction is, that the former has its head and part of the neck more smooth than the latter, and the snout is considerably more wide and flat, as well as more rounded at the extremity. The largest of these animals do not usually exceed eighteen feet. Alligators are natives of the warmer parts of America, and are the dread of all living animals. Their voracity is so great that they do not spare even mankind.
The voice of the Alligator is loud and harsh. They have an unpleasant and powerful musky scent. M. Pagés says, that near one of the rivers in America, where they were numerous, their effluvia was so strong as to impregnate his provisions, and even to give them the nauseous taste of rotten musk. This effluvium proceeds chiefly from four glands, two of which are situated in the groin, near each thigh, and the other two at the breast, under each fore leg. Dampier informs us that, when his men killed an Alligator, they generally took out these glands, and, after having dried them, wore them in their hats by way of perfume.
The following anecdote of the voracity of this animal is related by Waterton, in his “Wanderings in South America”:—“One Sunday evening, some years ago, as I was walking with Don Felipe de Ynciarte, governor of Angustura, on the bank of the Oroonoque, ‘Stop here a minute or two, Don Carlos,’ said he to me, ‘while I recount a sad accident. One fine evening last year, as the people of Angustura were sauntering up and down here, in the Alameda, I was within twenty yards of this place, when I saw a large Cayman rush out of the river, seize a man, and carry him down, before anybody had it in his power to assist him. The screams of the poor fellow were terrible, as the Cayman was running off with him. He plunged into the river with his prey: we instantly lost sight of him, and never saw or heard him more.’”