Author s Preface

Travel, for travel s sake, is to my mind a waste of time

and energy and an unnecessary expense. It is so much

better to arrive. But alas, I m obliged to travel to satisfy

my vice. Let me make this clear: My vice, for that s what

it is, is the study of animals. This unreasoned passion has

often taken me to remote parts of the earth.

What have I not endured in order to have a fleeting

glimpse of a rare species of monkey hidden away in the

foothills of the Annamite monntains? And when I think

of the number of times my passport was stamped, the

amount of dust I inhaled and the pounds I sweated off,

before being able to observe a tribe of proboscis monkeys

in Borneo . . . no, I don t like travel.

The reason for setting off this time was two strange

animals, or rather reptiles. One was the Komodo lizard,

a kind of antediluvian monster straight out of popular

legend, which lives on a small, remote Indonesian island.

About twelve feet long, it weighs all of three hundred

pounds. The other was the sphenodon of Stephen Island,

Sphenodon punctatum to the knowledgeable. It is not

much to look at-thirty inches long at most, thin, little

different from any ordinary lizard. Bnt it existed in its

present form 250 million years ago, long before the dino-

saurs and brontosauruses appeared on earth.

More amazing still, this living fossil, which flourished

during the Triassic and Jurassic periods, possesses a third

eye-the parietal eye, which corresponds to the pineal

gland in mammals.

These two reptiles are of great interest. Unfortunately,