The _horned frog_, as modern travellers have christened it, or horned lizard,[173] as those of earlier times more rationally called it, is the most famed and curious reptile of the plains. Like the prairie dog, it is only found in the dry regions, often many miles from water. It no doubt lives nearly, if not wholly, without drink. Its food probably consists chiefly of ants and other insects; though many Mexicans will have it, that the _camaleon_ (as they call it) _vive del aire_--lives upon the air. It has been kept several [Pg282] months without partaking of a particle of aliment. I once took a pair of them upon the far-western plains, which I shut up in a box and carried to one of the eastern cities, where they were kept for several months before they died,--without having taken food or water, though repeatedly offered them. {232} The whole length of the horned frog is from two to five inches--body flatted horizontally, oval-shaped, and between one and two inches wide in the middle. The back is beautifully variegated, with white and brown, and sometimes a yellowish purple. The belly is whitish and covered with brown specks. It acquired its name from a pair of short horns projecting from the top of the head--with other smaller horny protuberances upon the head and body. It has a short tail, which gives it a lizard-like appearance. It is a very inoffensive creature, and may be handled with perfect impunity, notwithstanding its uncouth appearance, and sometimes vicious demonstrations. As birds mostly incline to the timbered regions, there is but a scant variety to be met with upon the plains. About the Cross Timbers and indeed on all the brushy creeks, especially to the southward, are quantities of wild _turkeys_, which are frequently seen ranging in large flocks in the bordering prairies. That species of American grouse, known west as the _prairie-hen_, is very abundant on the frontier, and is quite destructive, in autumn, to the prairie corn-fields. This fowl is rarely seen over two hundred miles beyond the border. _Partridges_ are found about as far west; but their number is quite limited anywhere beyond the precincts of the settlements. About the streams there are different species of geese and ducks, as well as both sand-hill and white cranes: also flocks of a species of plover and {233} curlew. Add to these numbers of hawks and ravens, and we have most of the fowls of the [Pg283] Prairies. Flocks of the latter follow in the wake of caravans with even greater constancy than wolves.