100 
dentelations of the back down to the belly, with zigzag spots of 
dark olive-brown dispersed about. At very regular intervals, the 
tail is alternately of a lighter and darker olive-green. A _bluish- 
green colour, more decided than on the body, prevails in the dente- 
lations of the back, and on the legs...... 
« Succulent herbs, growing in the forests of the limestone hills I 
have referred to, supply food for theIguana. These hills, however, 
are so little suited for this sort of vegetation, that hardly anything 
more than aromatic and resinous trees and balsamic plants grow 
there. The lignum-vite (Guaiacum), the Acacia nilotica, and cactoid 
plants,—particularly the torch and melon thistles (Cactus repandus et 
peruvianus, et Cactus melocactus),—the lantana, and the varronia, 
with many balmy mallows (Sida altheifolia, urens, capillaris, et vis- 
cosa), and the vervain (Stachytarpheta), seem to comprise almost the 
whole catalogue of trees, shrubs and herbs. These hills are, how- 
ever, inhabited by several domestic animals, which have run wild. 
Goats and hogs, derived from the common domestic breeds, have 
become feral; and even the common domestic poultry, cocks and 
hens, have taken to the woods as jungle-fowl, with the pintado. 
Quails and doves find here a safe breeding-place. These hills are 
also the special resort of the musteline thrush, the wood-thrush of 
the North Americans, which more than divides with the mocking- 
bird the credit of a songster. It has a louder and more brilliant 
note, though its song be greatly less varied and melodious. The 
fruit of the torch-thistle seems the great attraction of the wood- 
thrush, but it is not easy to perceive the resource of the granivorous 
birds. The aromatic herbs suit the wild goats; but the hogs can 
find but few edible roots among rocks, but very thinly interspersed 
with soil. In the occasional hollows a little mould has been col- 
lected from decayed leaves, mingled with marl, extremely stony and 
sterile; and here a little more succulent herbage may prevail, and a 
few of the edible roots of the country may be found growing. The 
rocks have numerous caverns, and the springs that break out at the 
foot of the cliffs are an impure brackish water, though extremely 
transparent. Yet this district is almost exclusively the haunt of 
the Iguana. The occasional ones taken in the savannas are con- 
sidered to be stray visitants from the neighbouring hills; they are 
not permanently established in the plains in which they are found. 
« T have noticed the particular kind of locality which the Iguana 
inhabits in this part of the country, because it presents very different 
features from the haunts usually assigned to this lizard elsewhere. 
Forests on the banks of rivers, and woods around springs, where it 
passes its time in the trees and in the water, living on fruits, grains 
and leaves, are said to be the places in which the hunters find it on 
the American continent....... i 
After referring to some notes of Sir R. Schomburgk made in 
Guiana, and to Goldsmith’s graphic picture of noosing the Iguana, 
probably derived from Labat, which I do not here quote, because 
they refer to an animal generically distinct from ours,—my friend 
reverts to his own observations :— 
