96 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



the poor victims, if not otherwise accessible, are starved into surrender. Birds and 

 their eggs, insects, and even lizards of smaller size are all equally acceptable as food 

 to these giants of their race. 



Examples of the Lace Lizard are usually on view in the Reptile House at the 

 Regent's Park, including, at the present time, specimens that measure as much as four 

 or five feet in total length. In none of these imported individuals, however, do the 

 bright blue and yellow tints that decorate the throat exhibit the vividness charac- 

 teristic of specimens fresh from their native " bush." The individual possessed by the 

 author being of too erratic a disposition to be trusted to sit for his portrait in the 

 open, the best had to be made of the opportunities afforded of photographing him 

 through the wire netting of his cage. The most satisfactory of these attempts, 

 reproduced in Plate XIV., suffices, notwithstanding the intervening wirework, to 

 impart a very fair idea of its most characteristic attitude, the natural involute 

 coiling of the tail exhibited by the creature when in complete repose being especially 

 noteworthy. Their tail constitutes with the Monitors a very formidable weapon. It 

 is frequently longer than the body compressed from side to side, and as tough as 

 leather. Independently of its armature of teeth and claws, the animal can by virtue 

 of this appendage transform itself into a sort of animated stockwhip and severely 

 punish incautious aggressors at close quarters. An attendant at the Zoological 

 Gardens was assailed in this manner and had his neck severely lacerated by the tail 

 of one of these reptiles while cleaning out its den, a short while since. Varani 

 skins are, it may be mentioned, extensively utilised nowadays for the manufacture of 

 purses and other "fancy leather" or "Lizard Skin" articles. 



There is a species of Monitor, Varanus giganteus, allied to the arboreal 

 variety, V. varius, that is accredited with attaining to even larger proportions, a length 

 of as much as eight feet having been recorded of specimens from the northern 

 territory of South Australia. The habits of this species are, however, very distinctly 

 amphibious, on which account it was originally referred by Gray to the genus 

 Hydrosaurus. Varanus, or Hydrosaurus salvator, is another huge Monitor possessing 

 similar amphibious habits and attaining to like dimensions, which, in addition to 

 inhabiting Queensland, is met with in India and throughout the Malay Archipelago. 

 A remarkably fine example of this Monitor, shot by Lieutenant Stanley Flower 

 at Singapore, has been recently presented by him to, and has been admirably set up 

 in, the Zoological Galleries of the British, Natural History, Museum. Excepting to 

 those who may take delight in the society of full-grown crocodiles and alligators, the 



