Yet there was a time when night apes and large ground birds seem to have had things all their own way, the world over, and Central America may have afforded a chance for existence to several species of reptiles which at present are found only on the West Indian islands. The Cuban bush tortoise (_Emys nigra_) is found only in the forests of Santiago and Puerto Principe, and there only on the south coasts. It is the most sluggish creature of its genus, and does not seem to have had enterprise enough to crawl around the sand belt of Cape Maysi and colonize the jungles of the north side provinces. It is as helpless as a hedgehog, _minus_ its bristles. The darkeys of the Cuban planters crack its armor with home-made hammers, and the _tortuga prieta_, or prieta, as they call it for short, forms a factor of holiday _menus_ as frequently as 'possum pie in southern Georgia. Swift-flowing rivers bear it away as they would a floating log, and it is wholly incredible that its ancestors should have crossed the Caribbean Sea in quest of a more congenial home; but it is possible enough that its eggs may have been ferried across on one of the driftwood islands which the Sumasinta River often tears from the coast swamps of southern Mexico and carries into the current of the Gulf Stream. The evolution of the South American giant cats was probably the death warrant of its continental relatives, but in Cuba it had no four-footed enemies except the _hutia_, or jungle rat, that now and then destroys its eggs. An equally favored islander is the grayish-yellow rock lizard, abounding in the uplands of Cuba and Hayti. The lizard-killing cranes of Honduras have not found their way to the Antilles, and the _lagartilla_ still basks in the sun that once smiled upon the indolence of the naked Lucayans. The _toco_, or Cuban hornbill, however, devours small reptiles of all sorts, and the West Indian tree lizards have become almost as nimble as squirrels. They dodge behind branches and wait to ascertain the origin of every flitting shadow, but from imminent danger save themselves by a swift descent, followed by a bold leap into the thickets of the underbrush. Their courtship is quite as grotesque as that of the strutting bush pheasants. The males will swing their heads up and down and puff up their throat-bags till their skin seems on the point of disruption, while the objects of their rivalry sit blinking, reluctant to risk an open manifestation of preference. Some gorgeously beautiful varieties are found in Jamaica: greenish-blue, with a metallic luster, and rows of bright crimson spots, as if the design of protective colors had been patterned after the flower shrubs of the tropics. [Illustration: IGUANA.]