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Updated: April 30, 2025
The skin of the cameleon is of a very soft and delicate texture, and appears to the observer similar to a shagreen skin, elastic and pliable; and it may be owing to this extraordinary construction that it changes its colours and size with that facility which astonishes us; but what may be considered as a more wonderful faculty is, its expanding and contracting itself at pleasure, and, as it were, retaining the fluid in an uniform manner, when in health, but exhaling it when in a state of suffering, so as to reduce its dimensions to a more contracted size.
The leoncerote, offspring of the male hyena and the lioness, having the body of an ass, the legs of a deer, the breast of a wild beast, a camel's head, and armed with terrible fangs; the tharanda, which, according to Hugh of Saint Victor, has the shape of the ox, the profile of the stag, the fur of the bear, and which changes colour like the cameleon; finally, the sea-monk, the most puzzling of all, since Vincent of Beauvais describes it as having its body covered with scales, and it is furnished, in lieu of arms, with fins all over claws, besides having a monk's shaven head ending in the snout of a carp.
The eyes of the cameleon may also be considered a remarkable singularity; they are covered with a thin membrane, which nature has given it to supply the want of eye-lids, and this membrane is sunk in the centre by a lengthened hole, which forms an orifice, bordered by a shining circle.
Abridged from "Cameleon Sketches," by the author of the "Promenade round Dorking." "Well, do you know, that after all you have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous." Cruelty!
Thus avarice is said to shoot up in ancient soil, and thus, I myself bud forth in history at fifty-six. The cameleon is said to receive a tincture from the colour of the object that is nearest him; but the human mind in reality receives a bias from its connections. Link a man to the pulpit, and he cannot proceed to any great lengths in profligate life.
Of the Cameleon. The cameleon is a native of the torrid zone, and is a genus of the lizard: the faculty of assuming the colour of every object it approaches is ascribed to it, and other singular properties; but there are many rare phoenomena not so well understood, such as its absorption and expulsion of air at pleasure, its property of living a considerable time without any kind of nourishment, and its extraordinary visual advantages, which are perhaps not to be found in any other of the wonderful works of the creation.
In this land be many nations with divers faces wonderly and horribly shapen: Also therein be many wild beasts and serpents, and also Rhinoceros, and the beast that hight Cameleon, a beast with many colours.
Sir Hyde Parker was lost in a hurricane, off Cuba, in the West Indies, in the year 1780. The same hurricane destroyed the Thunderer, 74; Stirling Castle, 64; La Blanche, 42; Laurel, 28; Andromeda, 28; Deas Castle, 24; Scarborough, 20; Beaver's Prize, 16; Barbadoes, 14; Cameleon, 14; Endeavour, 14; and Victor, 10 guns. Lieut. Archer was first-lieutenant of the Phoenix at the time she was lost.
To convince myself how far the assertion might be admitted, that the cameleon can exist upon air, I have placed them in a cage, so constructed, as to exclude any thing else, even the minutest insect; when I have visited my captives, they have opened their mouths and expelled the air towards me so as to be felt and heard.
It remains immoveable for a length of time, and its motions are all cautious and slow, continuing to loll out its tongue, which is long and glutinous, in order to secure the little insects that are necessary to its nourishment; and I doubt not but it has an attractive influence over its prey, for I have observed them continually floating around the cameleon, when scarcely discernible in any other space.
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