Zoology.-] NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. [Reptiles. 



The Geckoes form one of the most peculiar divisions of the 

 saurian reptiles. They are all small disagreeable-looking Lizards, 

 inhabiting warm countries, and are nocturnal in their habits, catching 

 insects, especially caterpillars and other larvae, and worms, on which 

 they feed by night ; and hiding under the bark of trees and in other 

 crevices by day, and especially shunning the glare of the sun, in 

 which the other kinds of Lizards delight. They have a wide, flat 

 head, narrow neck, the body always depressed, or flattened from 

 above downwards, broadest in the middle, and never have any median 

 crest on the body or tail. The legs are strong, the feet short, with 

 the toes rather short and nearly equal in length, usually furnished 

 with sharp, retractile claws, like those of a cat, for climbing the 

 bark of trees, and generally furnished with transverse membranous 

 plates below, recalling the structure of the foot of a fly, and 

 enabling them to run up smooth surfaces, such as a perpendicular 

 wall of a house, or on the ceiling of a room, with great swiftness, 

 darting on the flies and other insects, which it can only catch with 

 its jaws, by pouncing upon them and swallowing them whole, the 

 oesophagus or gullet being unusually large, to allow of this mode 

 of feeding, and the articulation of the lower jaw being far behind 

 the head, as in the crocodiles, to form a large gape. The structure 

 of the tongue is a distinguishing peculiarity of the whole group, 

 being short, thick, fleshy, blunt, and slightly notched in front, which 

 is free, but with very slight powers of protrusion, contrasting 

 strongly with the Monitors, for instance (see Plate 41, Decade V.). 

 Like most nocturnal animals, the eyes are very large, and the pupil 

 usually vertical and elliptical, with fringed edge ; the eye-lids are 

 continuous, like those of a chameleon, the under one very small, 

 and the upper very large, and a transverse winking one moving 

 transversely between them. 



They are remarkable for uttering a sharp, loud cry or click, in 

 some species like the word " Geck-o," from which their name 

 arises. 



The skin seems soft and almost naked, from the minuteness and 

 granular character of the scales, the head being destitute of con- 

 spicuous plates, unlike most Lizards. The tail is less than the body 

 in length, and so brittle that it falls off even from a slight jar or 



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