CHAMELEONS.—WILD CAT.—EAT. 125 colour is light green, without any yellow, and on the other, dark green with yellow spots, and the same colouring of the body's sides extends down their long slender tails. The whole body becomes, at times, of a bright grey with some dark points and the yellow spots often wholly vanish, or are changed into lighter streaks. The changes from dark to bright light green, and the whole body becoming almost transparent, are the only variations of colour we have remarked after two months' close observation. In fact, the animal, with its immense head and mouth, its pig-like back and long flexible tail, by which it can suspend itself from the branches, is no pleasant object to look at, and mny well be hateful to many ; its body is covered with a skin similar to that of a frog, its eyes small but cunning looking, and are so placed and moveable, tliat it can see directly behind itself with them. What it feeds on we cannot tell; probably, from the construction of its great toothless jaws, on insects. With these we have tried them, and with other kinds of food, and kept five tied up with cords, to try and discover their means of sustaining life, but in vain, as we never discovered them eating anything. They pass the whole day clinging by their claws or tail to the post or cord, seldom stirring, and in spite of this we can perceive no visible decrease in them, either in size or fatness, nor any perceptible change for better or worse.

A young wild cat (kediss, or otta el challa) we have, affords us far more amusement ; it is now completely tamed, and its equal in beauty will not be easily found. Its prevailing colour is grey, but its feet, head, and whole body are covered over with the most beautiful leopard-like black spots. Its head is rather smaller and more pointed than those of our common German cats, but its crowning beauty is its large ears, that almost conceal its whole head, and arc black with a white stripe. Many persons here hold it to be a young tiger (nimr), but its wiiole habits and structure prove it to be a cat. The natives call it fachet, or fagged, and say it is a kind of gins (cut). Its companion and playfellow is a rat, with long silvery tail, which, when enraged, it can, like our weasel (which it is much of a size, with), stiffen and thicken, carrying it high over its back. The poor creature was brought to us Avith two broken legs, and we at once gave it to the cat that its pains might be cmled; but the cat, eitlx-r not recognising its prey, or being wearied of living alone, would not touch it, so the rat,