"Those gentry are hard to kill." Here is fact, not fantasy.
Lizard yarns no less sensational than this Mystery Story can be
found between the covers of solemn, zoological textbooks.
Reptiles, indeed, are far from finicky in the matters of air,
space, and especially warmth. Frogs and other such
sluggish-blooded creatures have lived after being frozen fast in
ice. Their blood is little warmer than air or water, enjoying no
extra casing of fur or feathers.
Air and food seem held in light esteem by lizards. Their blood
need not be highly oxygenated; it nourishes just as well when
impure. In temperate climes lizards lie torpid and buried all
winter; some species of the tropic deserts sleep peacefully all
summer. Their anatomy includes no means for the continuous
introduction and expulsion of air; reptilian lungs are little
more than closed sacs, without cell structure.
If any further zoological fact were needed to verify the
dénouement of "The Pipe," it might be the general statement that
lizards are abnormal brutes anyhow. Consider the chameleons of
unsettled hue. And what is one to think of an animal which, when
captured by the tail, is able to make its escape by willfully
shuffling off that appendage?--EDITOR.