stream coming from mount Mimas, conveyed by several aque. ducts, two whereof are well built, with stone arches, crossing the valley or deep channel which the brook itself has formed between two hills, on the northernmost of which are the ruins of the ancient castle. The two chief points or summits of mount Mimas are now called the two brothers, because they seem to resemble each other, being nearly of an equal height, and only separated by a cleft or opening.

Upon the whole, the good company and liberty a foreigner enjoys in Smyrna, and the agreeableness of the adjacent country, make it a pleasant place to reside in; but the pleasure is considerably abated by the excessive heats and the unhealthfulness of the situation*; and above all the frequent earthquakes that happen there, from which they are scarce ever free two years to. gether, and which have sometimes been felt for thirty or forty days successively. The city has been several times almost entirely destroyed by earthquakes, and in the year 1688 there happened a very dreadful one, by which great part of the houses and castles were overthrown, and four or five thousand persons perished; whereupon the merchants retired to the island of Scio, but returned to Smyrna when it was rebuilt, and commerce was thereby restored to its former channel.

One curiosity about Smyrna I had almost forgot to mention, which is their large sheep, with tails of an extraordinary size and

*It may be true in general that the air of Smyrna is unhealthful, but M. Tournefort tells us, that when he was in that city in the year 1702, there was a Venitian consul, one Signior Lupazzelo, who was a hundred and eighteen years of age; but how long he had lived there indeed he does not mention; so that I only relate the story as a remarkable instance of longevity. This gentleman used to boast that he was in the third century of his life, having been born the latter end of the sixteenth, and being then alive the beginning of the eighteenth. He was a square middle sized man; and M. Tournefort was informed he had near sixty children by five wives, without reckoning those by his slaves and mistresses; for the good man, it seems, was of an amorous disposition. It is very certain, adds the French traveller, that his eldest son died before him at the age of eighty-five, and the youngest of his daughters was but six years old at that time..

盡

fatness. They are indeed mere lumps of fat hanging to the rump of the animal, which I may venture to say, without danger of exceeding the truth, often weigh ten or twelve pounds, and sometimes more; but the fat of these rumps is no better than tallow, except that of the lambs, which is esteemed as good as marrow. The sheep are not peculiar to the country near Smyrna, but are common in many parts of the East, especially in Persia, as we are informed by travellers.

Now I have entered upon this subject, I cannot forbear giving some account of the pelican, a sort of fowl very frequent about the seas near Smyrna, which, perhaps, is the same that Pliny calls Onocrotalus, from its making a noise like the braying of an ass. This bird is either white or of a greyish colour, like a common goose, and has a body as big as a swan, but the neck is not so long. It has a beak sixteen or eighteen inches in length, and about two inches broad where it is widest; but when it opens, the under part of the beak, being of a flexible nature, enlarges itself to the breadth of five or six inches. Underneath this beak, near the entrance of the throat, it has a bag of a skinny substance, which, when it is empty, and the bird's mouth is shut, shrinks together like a bladder before it is blown, and is scarce to be perceived; but when it is filled, it stretches to an incredible bigness, so as to contain ten or a dozen quarts of water. In this receptacle they are said to carry water and fish for their young ones into the deserts and mountains where they breed, choosing unfrequented places for that purpose, as those of the greatest security. The throat of this fowl is large enough to swallow a carp twelve inches long, and the upper part of its beak terminates in a sharp hook, which perhaps, is of service to it in catching fish, on which it chiefly subsists; and its feet are webbed, and consequently fit for swimming. Its gizzard is not of a round fleshy substance, like that of other fowls, but is of a harder nature than the guts, about six inches long, and an inch in diameter. Its lungs are of a membranous texture, sticking fast on each side to the ribs, and of a reddish colour. The modern Greeks call this bird tourbana, and the Persians gave it the name of tacob, or the

water-drawer. Some say there are two sorts of pelicans, one feeding on fish, which I have been describing; the other a land fowl, feeding on venomous creatures.

The chameleon is an animal so frequently met with about Smyrna, and esteemed so great a curiosity both by ancient and modern naturalists, that it seems to merit a particular description. This creature is of the lizard kind, but its head is something larger than the common lizard; its back is gibbous, like a hog's; and it has four feet, which are divided into claws, like those of a parrot. It has a long flattish tail, which is of great use to it in climbing,* for by that it will hang to the branches of a tree as well as by its feet, and so draw up its whole body. Its tongue is three or four inches in length, of a whitish grisly substance, round as far as the tip, which is hollow, and sharped like the end of a pestle, and somewhat resembles an elephant's proboscis, or trunk, whence some call it the trunk of the chameleon. This tongue is contained in a sort of sheath joined to the throat, from whence the animal darts it with all imaginable swiftness upon flies that come in its way, which are detained by a glutinous or viscous matter excreted from the tip of it, and by that means drawn into its mouth. These flies are its ordinary food, and signs of them have been discovered in its excrements, as well as in the stomach and intestines of some that have been dissected: but as they will live a great while without taking any visible sustenance, from hence has arisen the vulgar error, that the chameleon lives upon air alone, which indeed they sometimes imbibe, till they are swelled beyond their usual size. The lungs of this animal reach almost the length of his body, consisting of a thin membranous substance, full of small veins, and are divided into two lobes, placed on each side, and filled with air, which being

*Sir George Wheeler tells us, that having caught a little Chameleon, he put it into a glass, so deep that it could not reach the brim with its fore feet by much, nor take any hold with its claws, and yet it got out and almost escaped; which it did as he afterwards observed, by standing on its fore-feet, and hoisting itself up backwards, till it catched hold of the edge of the glass with its tail, and by that means listed up its whole body.

let out in dissection, the lobes grow flaccid and shrunk together. The head of the chameleon is immoveable, except as it turns with the body; but to make amends for this defect, nature has given it very fine eyes, about the bigness of a pea, which it can move in a wonderful manner, the one backwards, the other forward, the one upwards, the other downwards, or can fix one eye on any object, whilst the other moves according to the motion of another object, so that its eyes are quite independent of each other, and capable of all the different motions that can be ima gined. The structure of the eyes is also surprising, and well worth the observation of the curious, for they are covered with a skin almost like that of the body, the grain being in circles, diminishing gradually to the centre, where there is a hole no bigger than the head of a pin, through which the light is received. The animal has no ears that can be discovered, but has two little apertures in the head, which serve for nostrils.

But the most astonishing of all things relating to the chameleon, and the most difficult to be accounted for is the faculty it is endued with of changing its color, and assuming those of the objects near which it is placed. The usual color of this creature, at least of such as are found about Smyrna, is green, darker towards the back, and lighter towards the belly, inclining to a yellow, with spots sometimes reddish, and sometimes whitish. There are many to be seen about the ruins of the old castle of Smyrna, of a greyish color, like the stones that are speckled with a whitish moss, in the heaps of which they breed and harbour. One that we took upon a bush, was of a bright green, but setting it down upon the ground where there was no grass, it became of a dark brown color, exactly like the earth on which it stood. We made several experiments to the same purpose, and found that by covering it a considerable time with a napkin, it would appear whitish, or of a cream color; but we never perceived it to change either red or blue, though wrapped in cloth of those colors for several hours together. When we kept it shut up in a box, its color was usually a mixture of green and yellow; and it appeared blackish by candlelight, though placed upon white paper.

Upon being handled or disturbed, it became stained with dark spots, bordering on green, all which would vanish in a little time. Sometimes from a green all over, it became full of black spots, and at other times, when it seemed to be all black, green spots would suddenly appear. In short, we found it far from being true, that it changed its color according to every object or body near it, as many have imagined; nor could we perceive that its changes were regulated by certain and invariable laws, but seemed rather spontaneous, the same cause not always producing the same effect. This, however, we constantly experienced, that the animal being placed upon green became green, and upon the dark earth would soon change to the same colour: and, what is equally surprising, we observed, that one hour it seemed to be a mere skin, and the next hour would appear, fat, plump, and fleshy. But the cause and manner of these various mutations I leave to be investigated by those who have leisure and curiosity to search into the wonderful secrets of nature.*

*Naturalists are very little agreed as to the reason or manner of the chameleon's changing its color. Some, as Seneca, maintain it is done by suffusion; others, as Solinus, by reflection; others, as the Cartesians, by the different disposition of the parts that compose the skin, which give a different modification to the rays of light; others, as Dr. Goddard, ascribe the change to the grains or globular inequalities of the skin, which in the several postures, he thinks may show several colors, and, when the creature is in full vigor, may have, as he terms it, rationem speculi, the effect of a mirror, and reflect the colors of adjacent bodies. But a later hypothesis than any of these seems to have the best foundation; for the chameleon being represented as an exceeding lean skinny animal, and yet capable of making itself appear fat and plump at pleasure, it is naturally inferred from hence, that it must have an extraordinary command over its skin, as to tension or laxity; since by swelling its bulk its skin will be filled, the fibres thereof stretched, and the pores lessened; and again, by withdrawing its grossness, the skin will be left lank and shrivelled, one part wrapping over another in little plaits or folds, as it is actually represented by some writers. Now the animal having it in its power to fill the skin more or less, has it in its power not only to alter the tone and texture of the fibres, upon which their reflexive quality in a great measure depends; but also to bring parts into sight which before lay concealed, or to conceal such as before lay open; and it is

D