THE GECKOES 



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chirping cry from which they derive their name, and their curiously expanded disc- 

 like toes. Absolutely innocuous, they have been credited from the earliest times 

 with ejecting venom from their toes, and of poisoning whatever they crawled over; 

 while the teeth of one species have been asserted to be capable of leaving their im- 

 pression on steel. Indeed, so intense is the dread inspired by these little creatures, 

 that in Egypt the lobe-footed or fan-footed species is commonly termed abou-biirs, 

 or father of leprosy. 



Geckoes, of which there are some two hundred and eighty species, distributed 

 over all the warmer parts of the globe, although more numerous in the Indian and 

 Australian regions than elsewhere, are for the most part small and plumply-built 

 nocturnal lizards, characterized by their depressed form and dust-like coloration. 

 The rather long and more or less flattened head is broad and triangular in shape; 

 the large eyes are characterized by the absence of movable lids, and by the pupil 

 being, except in a few diurnal forms, vertical; the aperture of the ears is like- 

 wise in the form of an upright slit. Externally, the head is covered with minute 

 granules, or small scales, and the^body is devoid of a bony armor, and in most 

 cases covered above with granules, and beneath with small overlapping scales. If 

 we add to the above features that the tongue is either smooth or covered with villous 

 papillae, and is short or moder- 

 ate in length, and not sheathed 

 at the base, and that the bod- 

 ies of the vertebrae articulate 

 by means of cup-shaped sur 

 faces at both their extremi 

 ties, we shall have said suffi- 

 cient to distinguish the geckoes 

 from all other members of the 

 suborder. As regards their 

 other external characteristics, 

 the neck is very short and 

 thick; the body, although 

 rounded, markedly depressed, 

 and the tail, which is generally 

 remarkably brittle, usually 

 thick and of moderate length, 

 with its basal portion either 



cylindrical or laterally compressed, although it may be leaf-like, or even rudimental. 

 In some cases the tail is known to be prehensile, and it is not improbable that it is 

 frequently endowed with this power. The limbs are generally remarkable for 

 their shortness, and are always provided with five toes each, the tips or sides of 

 which may be more or less dilated. In those species inhabiting desert regions, the 

 toes are of normal form, being often nearly cylindrical, and keeled on their lower 

 surfaces; but in the great majority of the members of the family, they are expanded 

 either throughout their length or partially into adhesive discs, of which the under 

 surface is formed by a series of movable symmetrical plates of variable form, by 



I,OBE-FOOTEr> GECKO. 



