GECKOS. 89 



gust. A Gecko, confident in his powers of flight, 

 appears boldly to await his adversary, and his 

 sudden disappearance at a nearer approach adds 

 to the horror which his uncouth form inspires. 

 The poor Geckos, too, have a bad name. They 

 are supposed to poison whatever they touch, be 

 it animate or inanimate, and their saliva is said to 

 vex the skin of those on whom it falls with foul 

 eruptions. Many of these cuticular irritations, 

 when they have actually existed from the inter- 

 vention of these animals, may have arisen from the 

 extremely sharp claws of a Gecko running over a 

 sleeping man, or small blisters may have been 

 raised by the adherent apparatus at the bottom 

 of its feet." 



The explanation here given of the baneful 

 effects supposed to be produced by the feet of 

 some species of this Family, though repeated in 

 most works on the subject, seems to us futile and 

 unsatisfactory. We do not believe that the ad- 

 hesion of the suckers of the toes of these minute 

 animals would produce the smallest appreciable 

 result on the skin of a man, in the way of rais- 

 ing blisters, nor that the muscular power with 

 which the little claws are moved would be suf- 

 ficient to pierce the flesh. 



The genera and species which compose the 

 Family are rather numerous, and are scattered over 

 all the great divisions of the globe. Europe, 

 however, has but two, neither of which is found 

 in the British Isles. To Asia, Africa, America, 

 and Australasia, the remainder are distributed in 

 about equal proportions, each of these regions 

 having twelve or fourteen species ; the whole 

 amounting to between fifty and sixty. 



