LIZARDS, CROCODILES, AND TORTOISES 319 



and fish of many distinct kinds, are often very con- 

 spicuous. 



The two commonest lizards are the little wall- 

 geckos, or, as the natives call them, tik-tiks, 

 Hemidactylus gleadovii, and the so-called blood- 

 suckers, Calotes versicolor. Every one is familiar 

 with the former, as so many of them are constant 

 inmates of houses, where they run around over the 

 walls and roofs of the rooms, lurking by day behind 

 picture-frames or other hanging ornaments, and issu- 

 ing forth in the evening to feast upon the insects that 

 swarm in, allured by the light of the lamps. When 

 they adhere motionless to the walls on the outlook 

 for their prey, they look so much as though they 

 were gummed to the surfaces on which they rest, 

 that it is sometimes hard to persuade people who 

 are new to the country that they are actually living 

 creatures and not Japanese curios. All through the 

 still heat of a summer's day the silence of the care- 

 fully shaded rooms is occasionally broken by the 

 queer little cries of " tik, tik, tik tik tik," to which 

 they owe their native name, and which are all the 

 more remarkable then because the animals are 

 usually hidden away in their diurnal residences. 

 When they are visible, they are queer little objects 

 with blunt muzzles, pot-bellies, and tails, that at best 

 are stumpy, and often are either wholly absent or in 

 various stages of eccentric repair in consequence of 

 accidents. When they lie at rest against a wall, the 



