r a time. To-day I timidly
approached one of the ferocious looking animals he writes about. It was
spread out on a window pane in the back premises of the Yacht Club. No
one was looking or I would not have dared to exhibit an interest in such
a common object. It was like this, a dream-like beast, with a golden eye
and still as could be, except that its throat moved (the window and
lizard, are reduced to about one-fifth of life size), and its eye
meditated evil. I ventured to put the end of my stick near it, and it
went off with such alarming speed that I hastily withdrew my stick. It
had vanished into a crack, I'd never have dreamed a small crevice in a
window sash could hold such an extraordinary creature! I must look him
up in "E. H. A."

[Illustration]

Colonel Sir Thomas Holdich's "India," in my humble opinion, is an
absolutely perfect book of reference, of concentrated information on
populations, their origin and characteristics; geology, meterology,
distribution plants with excellent maps printed by Bartholomew; it might
be called scientific, but for the charm of the touches of colour the
whole way through.

The Murrays' book is very useful, but so dry that you hardly care to
open it except in emergency. It has many references to the times of the
Conquest of India and the Mutiny, and the editor, an Englishman or
Anglicised Scot, frequently gives the names of individuals, soldiers and
private people, who distinguished themselves in these times. For
example, at the Siege of Seringapatam, where he mentions such well-known
names as Baillie, Baird, Campbell, and M'Donald, two-thirds the names of
my countrymen, and he calls them "English!" which makes me think of Neil
Munro's skipper of "The Vital Spark" and his remark about his Mate, "He
wass a perfect shentleman, he would neffer hurt your feelings unless he
was trying." Writers in the days of the Mutiny wrote of the feats of the
"British troops," their gallantry, and all the rest of it; look up _The
Illustrated London News_ of that time, and you will see this is true.
Why--confound them all--do they talk of "English" to-day, when they
refer to Scots, Irish, and Englishmen, and the people of our Colonies;
is it merely casual, or a deliberate breaking of the terms of Union of
1707? Eitherway the effect tends to dis-union, it is ante-Imperial and
for Home Rule for "A Little England." Ahem--may that pass as a
"digression?"--Now for more nature studies. I saw in the Cra