1820.] Royal Academy of Sciences, 459 



Diard, a young naturalist in the Earfl Indies, who is occupied in 

 scientific researches, that this species of quadruped inhabits not 

 only the island of Sumatra, but hkewise a part of India beyond 

 the Ganges. Hitherto the genus of the tapirs had been supposed 

 peculiar to America. 



M. Moreau de Jonneo, a correspondent of the Academy, who 

 intends to describe particularly the different reptiles of the 

 Antilles, and who began that work last year by a very detailed 

 history of the famous yellow viper, or fer de lance of Martinique, 

 presented this year to the Academy a memoir on the species of 

 gecko, called in that island mabouia des murailles, and which 

 is no other than the thorny-tailed gecko of Daudin. This ani- 

 mal, which has a hideous aspect, and talons which give him the 

 faculty of fastening himself so as to walk along ceilings, inhabits 

 the interior of houses, where it principally pursues the cock- 

 roaches. 



The inhabitants have a great dread of it, attributing noxious 

 quahties to it, and have given him the name of mabouia, because 

 it is that by which the evil spirit is known among the Caribbees. 

 It is the same animal, of which Acrelius relates, that it spits out a 

 black and venomous saliva, and it has been mentioned, but very 

 ill described, by several naturalists under the name of spectator. 

 There is another species of gecko called in the Antilles, mabouia 

 of the Bananas ; it grows to a larger size, and is the smooth 

 gecko of Daudin ; and its tail, after having been pulled off, fre- 

 quently grows again larger than it was at first.* 



These remarks are the more interesting, as some naturalists 

 had erroneously given the name of mabouia to a species of scinque. 



The same writer has given another memoir respecting a 

 species of coluber, which, from its agility, has acquired the name 

 of runner (coluber cursor gm). It is a timid innocent animal, 

 destroying a great number of snails, and very carefully protected 

 by the inhabitants, because they suppose it to be the bitter 

 enemy of the fer de lance viper, but that is an error, owing, 

 according to M. de Jonnes, to their having confounded it with 

 a large species of boa, which no longer exists at Martinique. 



The large works on zoology published by the academicians, 

 have been continued with zeal. There has appeared one volume 

 of the Animals without Vertebrae, by M. Delamarck, and also 

 some numbers of the " Zoological Observations " of M. Hum- 

 boldt, and of the Insects of Africa, by M. de Beauvois. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

 We have already, in our analysis of last year, given a very 



• The gecko with :i thorny l.'iil, the gecko porphyr6, and the spectator, are, 

 aceording to M. Moreiui (In Jonn<-s, (he same animal ; Ihcy belong to the family of 

 the hemidaclyl geckos. The smooth ^eeko, and the gecko withasnullen tuil, are 

 aho the !><tiiie, and belong to the thecadactylb. 



8 



