There Are Plenty Of
Herons, White, Black, Blue, And Divers Mixed Colours; With Many
Bastard Hawks, And Other Birds Of An Infinite Variety Of Kinds And
Colours, Most Having Crests On Their Heads Like Peacocks.
There are
great store of lizards and camelions also, which agree in the
description given by Pliny, only it
Is not true that they live on air
without other food; for having kept one on board for only a day, we
could perceive him to catch flies in a very strange manner. On
perceiving a fly sitting, he suddenly darts out something from his
mouth, perhaps his tongue, very loathsome to behold, and almost like a
bird-bolt, with which he catches and eats the flies with such speed,
even in the twinkling of an eye, that one can hardly discern the action.
In the hills there are many spiders on the trees, which spin webs from
tree to tree of very strong and excellent silk of a yellow colour, as if
dyed by art. I found also hanging on the trees, great worms like our
grubs with many legs, inclosed within a double cod of white silk.
[Footnote 212: Called the beautiful beast in Keeling's
voyage. - Purch.]
There grows here great store of the herb producing aloes, and also
tamarind trees by the water side. Here also is great abundance of a
strange plant which I deem a wild species of cocoa-nut, seldom growing
to the height of a tree, but of a shrubby nature, with many long prickly
stalks some two yards long.
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