Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/212

Rh The "Mountain Devil" is about five or six inches long, often not quite so much, and its head, back, legs, and tail, in fact the whole of its body, are covered with prickly spines like the thorns of a rose bush. It looks very much as if it had two heads, or rather perhaps like a lady with a large chignon; and to make this resemblance the more perfect the false head, which is placed behind the real one, is much the biggest of the two; seeming (so my husband thought) to have been intended as a defence to the head proper: since he found that when the creature was alarmed by bringing a stick or a rod close to its eyes it instinctively placed its real head between its fore legs, and brought the false one down to the former position of the real one; thus retroverting the formidable spines with which both are armed, and presenting an object which its great enemy the snake could scarcely attempt to swallow.

The colour of the creature is a rich yellow varied with spots of deep vandyke-brown; these are large upon the head and body, and diminish gradually as they approach the tail until they become no larger than pepper corns. The spots seem intended to imitate the lichens upon the red granite rocks amongst which the lizard lives and seeks its prey, chiefly ants and flies; and the resemblance is much increased by the fact that at different seasons of the year the brown patches change into green and reddish hues, in accordance with the varying age and appearance of the lichens, so that the insects upon which the lizard feeds are completely deceived, and lulled into a false security which proves fatal to them.

I forget how we became possessed of it, but at all events