66 Zoological Society. 
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 i in which the hunters find it on 
the American continent...... 
After referring to some “notes of Sir R. Schomburgk made in 
Guiana, and to Goldsmith’s 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 :— 
«The gular pouch which hangs like the dewlap of a bull beneath 
its throat can be inflated*, but it is not exactly known under 
what circumstances, ordinarily, it has recourse to this power of in- 
flation. When filled with air it would give breadth and buoyancy 
to the body, and if its habits are as aquatic as some accounts make 
them [those of Jguana proper] to be, it would afford to an her- 
bivorous animal no unimportant aid while swimming and cropping 
‘its flowery food.” When excited it assumes a menacing attitude, 
and directs its eye to the object of attack with a peculiarly sinister 
look. At this time it inflates the throat, erects the crest and dente- 
lations on the back, and opens the mouth, showing the line of those 
peculiarly-set white teeth, with serrated edges, so excellently made 
to illustrate the remains of the gigantic fossil Iguanodon. The prin- 
ciple of their construction is so precisely similar, as to leave no doubt 
of the genuine connexion of the extinct with the existing herbivorous 
lizard. ‘The adaptation of both is for the cropping and cutting of 
vegetable food. 
‘* In defending itself from attack, the Iguana conyerts its long 
flexible tail into no unimportant weapon. The dentelated upper 
edge, drawn rapidly over the body and limbs of an enemy, cuts like 
asaw. The twisted attitude which it assumes when approached is 
converted into a quick turn, in which movement the tail is nimbly 
struck by an overblow from one side to another, and then jerked 
* I believe my friend has fallen into a common error here. If I may judge 
from analogy in the genera Anolis and Dactyloa, the gular pouch in the /guanide 
is extensible but not inflatable, as I hope to show in a future paper on the habits 
of these genera.—P.H.G. 
