EAST AFRICAN REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS 61 



Numerous references are made in African Game Trails to this 

 common African reptile, and facing page 432 are Loring's excellent 

 photographs of a monitor robbing a crocodile's nest. 



There was an abundance of animal life, big and little, about our camp. 2^ In 

 the reeds and among the water lilies of the bay there were crocodiles, monitor 

 lizards 6 feet long, and many water birds * * * (Roosevelt, p. 397.) 



On one of these hunts, on which he shot a couple of buck, Kermit also killed a 

 monitor lizard. (Roosevelt, p. 417.) 



We did not find any crocodile's nest; but near camp, in digging a hole for the 

 disposal of refuse, we came on a clutch of a dozen eggs of the monitor lizard. They 

 were in sandy loam, 2J4 feet beneath the surface, without the vestige of a burrow 

 leading to them. When exposed to the sun, unlike the crocodile's eggs, they soon 

 burst. Evidently the young are hatched in the cool earth and dig their way 

 out. (Roosevelt, pp. 418-419.) 



At the main camp we found that Mearns had made a fine collection of birds 

 in our absence; while Loring had taken a variety of excellent photos of marabou, 

 vultures, and kites feeding, and, above all, of a monitor lizard plundering the 

 nest of a crocodile. The monitors were quite plentiful near camp. They are 

 amphibious, carnivorous lizards of large size; they frequent the banks of the river, 

 running well on the land, and sometimes even climbing trees, but taking to the 

 water when alarmed. They feed on mice and rats, other lizards, eggs, and fish; 

 the stomachs of those we caught generally contained fish, for they are expert 

 swimmers. One morning Loring surprised a monitor which had just uncovered 

 some crocodile eggs on a small, sandy beach. The eggs, about 30 in number, were 

 buried in rather shallow fashion, so that the monitor readily uncovered them. 

 The monitor had one of the eggs transversely in its mouth, and, head erect, was 

 marching off with it. As soon as it saw Loring it dropped the egg and scuttled 

 into the reeds; in a few minutes it returned, took another egg, and walked off 

 into the bushes, where it broke the shell, swallowed the yolk, and at once returned 

 to the nest for another egg. Loring took me out to see the feat repeated, replen- 

 ishing the rifled nest with eggs taken from a crocodile the doctor had shot; and I 

 was delighted to watch from our hiding place the big lizard as he cautiously ap- 

 proached, seized an egg, and then retired to cover with his booty. Kermit came 

 on a monitor plundering a crocodile's nest at the top of a steep bank, while, fun- 

 nily enough, a large crocodile lay asleep at the foot of the bank only a few yards 

 distant. As soon as it saw Kermit the monitor dropped the egg it was carrying, 

 ran up a slanting tree which overhung the river, and dropped into the water like 

 a snake bird. (Roosevelt, pp. 431-432.) 



Family LACERTIDAE 



Genus NUCRAS Gray 



NUCRAS EMINI Boulenger 



Nucras emini Boulenger, 1907, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 7, vol. 19, p. 488 

 (Lake Victoria, T. T.) ; 1920, Monogr. Lacert., vol. 1, p. 10. 



2 (U.S.N.M. 42492-3) Ulukenya Hills, K. C. (Sm. Afr. Exped.) 1909. 



Dr. J. A. Loring removed these somewhat damaged but full-grown 

 lizards from the stomach of a secretary bird which may either have 

 obtained them from the hills or more probably from the adjacent 

 Athi Plains, in either case the locdity is new though the species has 



" Rhino Camp, to which the three following quotations also refer. 



