Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/192

 deeply green, and if the excitement continues gradually change to black. When placed upon a tree the groundwork becomes a deep green and the stripes a deeper green or black, and so long as they remain on the trees the color does not change. The prevailing idea, that they take on the peculiar hue of the foliage among which they happen to be, is, I think, erroneous. We have placed them on the scarlet leaves of the dracæna and among the red flowers of the acacia, with no change from the prevailing green.

My largest specimen measures from nose to tip of tail fourteen inches, the body and tail being about equal—the circumference of the largest part of the body about six inches. The legs are thick and muscular. The form of the feet, so far as I am aware, has no parallel in the animal kingdom. They resemble two hands placed palm to palm and divided to the wrist. The outer palm has three minute fingers armed with sharp, curved claws, while the inner has but two. Opened to its full extent it clasps a space of about two inches. Hands and feet are much the same, except that the feet are somewhat larger and thicker. The entire body is covered with armor. This consists of oval plates placed edge to edge. There are about nine hundred to the square inch, giving on my largest specimen, by estimate, thirty-two thousand plates. The color has its seat in the armor.

The tail coils up into a ring quite close to the body, when not required for use. The feet and tail have great power of prehension. The animal will clasp a branch with either so firmly that considerable force is necessary to detach it. Giving the tail a turn round a twig they will throw the body forward and grasp another branch a foot or more away, and so move from branch to branch. At night they hang themselves up, sometimes by the tail only, or by the tail and one or more of their claws, and so sleep.

The eyes are cones about. one fourth of an inch in diameter, one half projecting beyond the socket, completely covered with armor except at the point where the pupil is seen. This is about the size of the head of a large pin, set in a delicate ring of burnished gold. The eyes act independently of each other, the cones rolling freely in all directions, one often looking straight forward while the other is turned backward, giving them a most comical appearance.

The mouth is literally an open sepulchre. When opened you see a deep cavern almost down to the stomach, with no indications of a tongue. At the ramus of the lower jaw a deposit of whitish, gelatinous matter may be seen, covered with a thick, viscid mucus. On pressing upward beneath the jaws, a round, fleshy tongue is thrown up, a fourth of an inch in diameter and extending deep into the throat, the point of which is covered by the gelatinous deposit before mentioned, much like the swab on the rammer of a cannon. There are no teeth, but the edges of the jaws are serrated to serve the purpose of seizing and holding its game.