LIZAEDS. 191 



this result. Thus in one I have found seeds and farinaceous 

 substance ; in another the fragments of a brilliant beetle of the 

 weevil group. I once observed one deliberately eat the ripe 

 glass-berries, munching half of one at a mouthful."' 



Thus far we have treated of chiefly arboreal Iguanidce ; and 

 although a Marine Lizard ( Trachyeephalus cristatus) cannot well 

 be so designated, it nevertheless belongs to the same particular 

 series. "We have next a long series of mainly terrene genera of 

 the same great American family, in which the body is subtrigonal 

 or depressed. As many as twenty-two genera, with sixty-one 

 species of the terrene Iguanidce, were catalogued by Dr. Gray in 

 1845, and a good many have since been added. There is a cor- 

 responding series in the kindred Old World family of Agancidce, 

 and in neither instance are the majority of them ground-frequent- 

 ing Lizards to any great extent. Thus, of Dr. Gray's first 

 genus Tropidolipis (so named from its large keeled scales), and of 

 which as many as nine species are given from Mexico, a tenth 

 (T. undulatus, of the United States) is described by Professor 

 Holbrook to inhabit chiefly the pine -forests, where it is often 

 found under the bark of decaying trees; it also commonly chooses 

 old fences for its basking-place. " It is exceedingly rapid in its 

 motions, climbing with great facility to the tops of trees, and is 

 hence not taken alive without great trouble. Its food consists 

 of insects, especially such as are found under decaying wood." 

 The colouring of this Lizard is remarkably brown, with narrow 

 zig-zag black bands above, and green below, with a white medium 

 stripe bordered with black ; throat and breast black, with a broad 

 green band across. Various species of kindred genera were 

 collected by Mr. Darwin, and are figured in the " Zoology of 

 H.M.S. Beagle" and of one of these (probably Lecol&nus Dar- 

 winii), which he observed at Bahia Blanca, in Northern Patagonia, 

 he remarks that " it lives on the bare sand near the sea-coast, and 

 from its mottled colour, the brownish scales being speckled with 

 white, yellowish red, and dirty blue, can hardly be distinguished 

 from the surrounding surface. When frightened it attempts to 

 avoid discovery by feigning death, with outstretched legs, depressed 

 body, and closed eyes : if further molested, it buries itself with 

 * A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica," by P. H. Gosse. 

 K2 



