SAUllIANS. 



21 



]ar, but their tongue is fleshy, thick, non-extensible, and only emarginated 

 at the tip. 



We may divide them into two sections ; the first, or that of the Aga- 

 MiANS, have no palatine teeth. In this section we place the following 

 genera, 



The Stellions— Stellio, Caw. 

 AVhich have, with the general characters of the family of the Iguanida 

 the tail encircled by rings composed of large and fretjuently spiny scales 

 The subgenera are as follows : 



CoRDYLUs*, Gronov. 

 The tail, belly, and back covered with large scales arranged in trans- 

 verse rows. The head, like that of the common lizards, is protected by 

 a continuous bony buckler, and covered with plates. In several species 

 the points of the scales on the tail form spiny circles; there are small 

 spines also to those on the sides of the back, on the shoulders, and out- 

 sides of the thighs, on which latter there is a line of very large pores. 



The Cape of Good Hope produces several species long confounded 

 under the name of Lacerta cordylus, L. These Saurians, whose 

 armour so completely defends them, are a little larger than the com- 

 mon Green Lizards of Europe, and feed on insects f. 



The Stellios have the spines of the tail moderate : the head enlarged 

 behind by the muscles of the jaws; the back and thighs bristled here and 



■whose inhabitants must have pronounced it H'mana, or Igoana. According to Bon- 

 tius it originated in Java, where tlie natives call it Leguan. In this case the Por- 

 tuguese and Spaniards carried it to America transformed to Iguana. They apply it 

 there now to a Sauvegarde, as a true Iguana. This name, as well as that of Guano, 

 lias occasionally been given to Monitors of the eastern continent. The reader of 

 travels should bear this in mind; I even consider the Leguan of Bontius as a 

 Monitor. 



* According to Aristotle, " the Cordylus is the only animal possessing feet and 

 branchiae. It swims with its feet and tail, the latter of which, as far as large things 

 can be compared with small, is similar to that of a Silurus. This tail is soft and 

 broad. It has no fins: it lives in marshes, like the Frog: it is a quadruped, and 

 leaves the water: sometimes it is dried up and dies." 



)t is evident that these characters can only belong to the larva of the aquatic 

 Salamander, as M. Schneider has very justly observed. Belon has described this 

 Salamander by the name of Cordyle, but his printer, by mistake, annexed to it the 

 figure of the Lac. nihUica, L. Rondelet has applied this name to the great Stellio of 

 Egypt, or Caudiverhera of Belon, mistaking the ear, in the figure, for a gill opening. 

 Between Rondelet and Linna-us, then, Cordylus has passed for the synonymes of the 

 Cuuduerhcra. Its special application to the above subgenus is altogether arbitrary. 

 Merrem has clianged it to Zondrus. 



t Daudin lias referred several synonymes of Stellio to Cordylus, just as he has 

 referred to Stellio several synonymes of the Geckotle. There are four species in 

 France: Cord, griseus, Nob. Seb. I, Ixxxiv, 4;— the C. niger, the ridges of whose 

 scales are more blunt, Seb. II, Ixii, 5; — the C.dvrsalis; — the C.microlepidolns. 



There are also some Cordyles at the C;ape of G. Ilfcpe, whose scales (even those 

 on the tail) are almost destitute of spines (C. lavigatus. Nob.) 



t The Stellio of the Latins was a spotted Lizard that lived in holes of walls. It 

 was considered the enemy of man, venomous and cunning. Hence the term stelUo- 



