Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/119

98 notable exception to the rule that reptiles are characterized by being covered with scales or plates. While most of the turtles live in fresh water or on land, a few species pass their lives in the open ocean, only coming ashore during the breeding season to. deposit their eggs. Some of these marine turtles grow to an enormous size, sometimes reaching a weight of over eight hundred pounds. One of them is much sought for on account of the delicacy o[ its flesh; another because of the thickness and beauty of its horny plates which furnish the so-called tortoise-shell, an important article of commerce. Turtles appear to reach.a very old age, specimens having been known to have lived several hundred years. The box tortoise of our woods, the musk turtles, the snapping turtles are familiar examples of thin order, while the terrapin, which lives in brackish ponds and swamps along our sea-coasts, is famous as a table delicacy.

The lizards are four-legged reptiles, usually of small living on the ground or in the trees, but very rarely voluntarily entering water. The so-called water lizards are not lizards at all, but belong to the salamanders and are distinguished by having a naked body not covered with scales. Most of the true lizards are of very graceful form, exceedingly quick at

running; others display the most.gorgeous coloration which, in many of them, such as the chameleons, changes according to the light, or the temperature, or the mood of the animal. Not all of them have four legs, however, there being a strong tendency to develop legless species which then externally become so much like snakes that they are told apart with some difficulty. Thus our so-called glass-snake, common in the Southern states, is not a snake at all, but lizard, as we may easily see by observing the ear openings on each side of the head, as no snake has ears. This beautiful animal is also known as the joint-snake, and both names have reference to the exceeding brittleness of its long tail, which often breaks in many pieces in the hands of the enemy trying to capture the lizard. That these pieces ever join and heal together is of course a silly fable. As a matter of fact, the body in a comparatively short time grows a new tail, which, however, much shorter and stumpier than the old one. The new piece is often of a different color from the rest of the body and