25 16 SCALED REPTILES 



districts it haunts sugar plantations. Although frequently found in the neighbor- 

 hood of water, it apparently never enters it; and generally dwells in wide-mouthed 

 holes situated beneath the roots of trees. Shy and retiring to a degree in inhabited 

 districts, when driven into a corner it shows fight, hissing at and striking with its 

 muscular tail the dogs employed in its pursuit. When sitting, the head is generally 

 raised and the forked tongue is in constant motion. Its diet comprises such living 

 creatures as it can capture, together with eggs. The female lays from fifty to sixty 

 hard-shelled eggs about the size of those of a pigeon, generally placed in the hil- 

 locks of white ants. 



The dracaena (Draccena guiancnsis} of the Guiauas and Amazonia is a some- 

 what smaller lizard, distinguished by its compressed and doubly-keeled tail, the 

 intermixture of keeled tubercles among the scales of the back, and the extremely- 

 broad crowns of the cheek teeth. 



Our second figured representative of the family is the Surinam 

 The Ameivas , . . . , , , 



ameiva (Ameiva sunnamensts) , belonging to a genus of nearly twenty 



species distributed over Central and South America, where they take the placed oc- 

 cupied by the true lizards in the Old World. They are distinguished by their 

 round keelless tails, the presence of less than twenty rows of large smooth scales on 

 the under surface of the body, and the compressed two- or three-cusped cheek teeth. 

 The tongue can be withdrawn into a sheath. The figured species, which is found 

 over South America as far as Nicaragua, attains a length of from fifteen to twenty 

 inches, and is very variable in coloration. The young are olive brown, with darker 

 markings or white dots, and a black, white-edged band running along the side of 

 the body and extending on to the tail; these bands generally disappearing with age, 

 although sometimes retained in the females. In the adult the upper surface is usu- 

 ally greenish, with some black and a few white spots; the under parts are greenish 

 white, spotted with black on the sides. Ameivas are generally found in dry dis- 

 tricts more especially near the coasts, and in their general habits are not very 

 different from the teju, usually living in holes, among old wood, or the herbage 

 of gardens. 



THE AMPHISB^NAS 

 Family AMPHISBsENID^E 



Among the most remarkable of all lizards are those whose typical representa- 

 tives have the power of moving equally well either backward or forward, from 

 whence they derive the name by which the group is now commonly designated. 

 Very nearly related to the preceding family, through those members of the latter 

 with aborted limbs, the amphisbaenas are distinguished by the simple and degraded 

 characteristics of the skull, in which all the arches have been lost, and the two pre- 

 maxillary bones are fused into one. All are adapted to a purely subterranean ex- 

 istence, and have long, worm-like bodies, devoid, except in one species, of any 

 external trace of limbs; while even the bones of the shoulder and pelvis are more or 



