A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"English, Douglas
General
A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"
English, Douglas
Animals -- Juvenile literature
In Chamæleons, however, and several other creatures, which change colour
much more than we do, and keep their changed colour for quite a long
time, the specks of paint lie in the _lower_ part of the skin, and often
there are numbers of them clustered together as if they had been pressed
down tight into little bags. These clusters of paint specks have the
power of branching out like sea anemones, and afterwards pulling
themselves together again like sea anemones when they are frightened.
When they are spread out so as to be as large as possible, the Chamæleon
is dark-coloured; and when they are drawn in so as to be as small as
possible, the Chamæleon is light coloured; and when, as is really most
usual, they are spread out in one part of his body and drawn in in
another, the Chamæleon is piebald. I expect you will be curious to know
what colour the specks of paint are, and whether they are always the
same. They are so small that one needs a powerful microscope to see
them; but, as far as we can tell, they are always brownish or reddish,
so that the greens and blues which are often to be seen in patches on a
Chamæleon have to be accounted for in some other way. It would take too
long to explain the blues and greens to you thoroughly, but I think I
can give you one little hint about them. You all know what
mother-of-pearl looks like. If you hold a piece one way it seems a dull
grey all over, but if you hold it another you see all the colours of the
rainbow, and you can even make the colours move about it if you handle
it properly. Now if the colours were paint they would not move about,
though they might not be so bright in some positions as in others, and
for the present you must be satisfied to know that a Chamæleon skin,
besides holding clusters of paint-specks which change their shape, is so
wonderfully made that it can show mother-of-pearl colours as well.
[Illustration]
A grown-up Chamæleon is usually greenish in the daytime, with brown
patches on his sides. When he goes to sleep at night he turns
cream-coloured and his patches become yellowish. A baby Chamæleon is
snowy white, and doesn't get spotted even when he is angry or excited,
as a grown-up Chamæleon always does.
Now for the Chamæleon pictures. First you must notice his eyes. He has
enormous eyeballs, but instead of having two eyelids to each, as we
have, he has one eyelid to each (it is really made up of two stuck
together), with a tiny round hole in the centre for his eye to look
through. This is queer enough, but there is something even queerer about
a Chamæleon's eyes. He can move either eyeball up or down or sideways,
but he hardly ever moves both the same way, so that he has quite the
most wonderful squint in the world, and often keeps one eye looking over
his shoulder while the other looks straight in front of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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