A curious and interesting comparison that comes under our observation is that, on the gray plains and rocky mountains of the interior the lizards are invariably of a dull and uninteresting color, quite in keeping with their surroundings.  No sooner, however, do we find ourselves in a district where nature’s deft hand has painted the whole canvas of the country a bright green, than the lizards which we see scuttling through the ferns and moss-beds are also the greenest of all the green things.  These scaly little reptiles shine and glisten like supple shapes of emerald, as one sees them gliding across the path.  This is but another link in the chain of evidence that seems to prove that animals derive much of their distinctive character and appearance from the nature of their surroundings.  In Northern China are a species of small monkey with a quite heavy coat of fur.  They are understood to be the descendants of a comparatively hairless variety which found its way there from the warm jungles of the South, the change from a warm climate to a cold one being responsible for the coat of fur.  In the same way, after noting the complete change that has come over the lizards, we conclude that, if a colony of the gray species from the other side of the mountains were brought and turned loose among the green foot-hills here, their descendants, a few generations hence, would be found with coats as green as those of the natives.  This conviction gathers force from the fact that no gray lizards whatever are encountered here; all the lizards we see are green.

Emerging from the foot-hills, we find ourselves in a country the general appearance of which reminds me of a section of Missouri more than anything I have seen in Asia.  Fields and pastures are fenced in with the same rude corduroy-fences one sees in the Missouri Valley, some well kept and others neglected.  The pastures are blue grass and white clover; bees are humming and buzzing from flower to flower, and, to make the similitude complete, one hears the homely tinkle of cow-bells here and there.  It is difficult to realize that all this is in Persia, and that one has not been transported in some miraculous manner back to the United States.  A little farther out from the base of the mountains, however, and we come upon wild figs, pomegranates, and other indigenous evidences of Eastern soil; and by and by our path almost becomes a tunnel, burrowing through a wealth of tiger-grass twenty feet high.  The fields and little clearings which, a few miles back, were devoted to the cultivation of wheat and rye, now become rice-fields overflowed from irrigating ditches, and in which bare-legged men and women are paddling about, over their knees in mud and water.