NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 387 



Mr. Macleay exhibited a living specimen of Trachydosaurus 

 asper, brought by the Honorable P. G. King, M.L.C., from the 

 Narran country. 



With respect to this Lizard, Professor Stephens read the follow- 

 ing account written by Dampier, in 1699 (Voyages, vol. iii. p. 122, 

 Ed. 1703) : — " A sort of Guanos are also found at Shark's Bay of 

 the same shape and size with other guanos (described vol. i., p. 57). 

 but differing from them in three remarkable particulars. For 

 these had a larger and uglier head, and had no tail ; and at the 

 rump, instead of the tail there, they had a stump of a tail, which 

 appeared like another head, but not really such, being without 

 mouth or eyes. Yet this creature seemed by this means to have a 

 head at each end. And which may be reckoned a fourth difference 

 the legs also seemed, all four of them, to be fore -legs, being all 

 alike in shape and length, and seeming by the joints and bending 

 to be made as if they were to go indifferently either head or tail 

 foremost. They were speckled black and yellow, like toads, and 

 had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles, plated 

 on to the skin, or stuck into it as part of the skin. They are very 

 slow in motion, and when a man comes nigh them they will stand 

 still and hiss not endeavouring to get away. Their livers are also 

 spotted black and yellow, and the body when opened hath a very 

 unsavoury smell. I did never see such ugly creatures anywhere 

 but here" (at Shark's Bay). " The guanos I have observed to be 

 very good meat, and I have often eaten of them with pleasure. But 

 though I have eaten of snakes, crocodiles and alligators and mauy 

 creatures that look frightfully enough, and there are but few that 

 I should have been afraid to eat of if pressed by hunger, yet my 

 stomach would scarce have served to venture upon these New 

 Holland guanos, both the looks and the smell of them being so 

 offensive." The description of the lizard is accurate and picturesque, 

 and the old buccaneer's estimate of its flesh is much the same as 

 that of the Murrumbidgee aborigines, who look with extreme con- 

 tempt upon those natives of the dry plains, who for want of better 

 food are obliged to " patter kurraggaly." 



