The Press., 1905-05-31
THE MEXICAN LIZARD
DELICIOUS EATING, HIS FLESH LIKE
 THAT OF CHICKEN.


 A Tale of the Curious Tail of the
 IEuana The Way This Peculiar
 Creature Can Grow R New Append
 age Nm Place of One Lost OF Stolen.
 My tale is of the tail of a lizard. We
 had steamed and railroaded many hun
 dreds of miles and at the end of civili-
 zation had started over a steep and
 narrow trail with horses and pack
 mules, finally finding ourselves en-
 camped In a deep canyon or barranca
 in west central Mexico.
 Iguanas, great, black lizards, three
 feet or more in length, were abundant in the deep caves of the cliff, coming out early In the morning to sun them selves and bobbing up and down as an owl ducks his head to get better look at us as our Mexican cook started the fire or stirred about the camp. We found them delicious eating. Though the Mexican demurred at first, preju- dice was soon cast aside. Their limbs might be black skinned and scaly with out, but within all was sweet, white meat, like that of chickens and frogs legs.
 The iguanas, which had their bur rows in the ground, would climb up each morning, up, up to the topmost limbs of some trees, and there bask in the sun. They had a most startling way of descending, headlong dive to the underbrush or into the water. AS twilight fell the sight of these great black apparitions sprawling earthward was most remarkable. If one of them had ever struck us in its descent our interest in this strange habit would suddenly have become lessened.
 Our usual method of procuring these giant lizards for our larder was to shoot them high above us, when they would tumble headlong to our feet. Sometimes we could approach close to one when it was fast asleep in the scorching heat of midday. Once I seized a big fellow by the tail. I was sorry a moment later, but as did not want to be beaten by lizard 1 held stoutly on. Never before had taken hold of such q steel spring. The crea- ture curled and twisted and snapped it's body about, the sharp scales hay ing anything but pleasant feeling on the palm of my hand. Suddenly some thing gave way, and fell on my back, while the iguana shot off tn the op- posite direction into a deep hollow among the rocks. When I regained my feet found some nine inches of tail in my hand, almost one-third of the entire animal.
 This is not an uncommon occurrence among lizards, and the ability to part with so considerable a portion of their anatomy insures many an escape from what would otherwise be inevitable death.
 Almost all animals with backbones have a thick, pliable cushion of car tilage between each of the bones in their spinal column, which permits them to bend and twist 1t with much freedom. The backbone of the 1guana is at first all cartilage, and when the hard cells of the bone begin to be de posited deep, narrow wedge or crack is left in each tail bone. This is filled with soft cartilage, so these bones are greatly weakened near their centers. Instead of an accidental defect this is an all wise provision of nature, fore seeing that hawks, vagrant naturalists and other enemies may some day be too quick for the reptile and will seize its tail before it can escape.
 When this happens, as in my case, the strain of the struggling creatures body is too great for the weak spots in It's tail bones, and one of these gives way, with the result above narrated. The muscles, too, are arranged to aid this phenomenon. They are short and thick and conical instead of running the whole length of the tail, and, being only dovetailed together, they readily give way. Only a few drops of blood escape; then the stump heals over, and before long a new tail begins to shoot out.
 This, of course, contains no bones, but instead a long, unjointed rod of cartilage exactly like the ancestral one which was present in the embryo igu- ana. Stranger still, the scales on this new tail are unlike those on the rest of the creatures body and actually may be like those of some bygone ancestor. In the smaller lizards, called geckos, this seems always to be the case.
 When I closely examined the tail which the iguana had left in my hands saw that 1t was one of these fraud" tails and had long ago supplanted the original appendage, with which some other enemy, doubtless a feathered one, mad absconded. Two new vertebrae or :ail bones had come off with the base ,f my piece.
 But the owner cares nothing for the ! number or character of his new tails. | They serve him well, and he is content. l It is curious fact that the tail making machinery in his backbone is so active | hat sometimes a double or even a riple tail will push out at the stump, md when the original tail Is even only ! lightly injured at one side tiny tail | will often sprout out where 1t has no \ light to be.-C. William Beebe in New l York Tribune
 Her Mental Exercise.