THE LIZARD KIND. 



709 



OF THE LIZARD KIND, 



.*> 



CHAPTER CLX. 



OF LIZARDS IN GENERAL. 



THERE is scarcely a naturalist, who has 

 treated of lizards, but has a particular manner 

 of ranking them in the scale of animated na- 

 ture. Ray, rather struck with the number of 

 their legs, than their habits and conformation, 

 has exalted them among quadrupeds; while 

 Linnaeus, attentive only to their long slender 

 forms, has degraded them among serpents. 

 Brisson gives them a distinct class by them- 

 selves, under the name of reptiles. Klein 

 gives them a class inferior to beasts, under the 

 name of naked quadrupeds. Some, in short, 

 from their scaly covering, and fondness for the 

 water, have given them to the fishes ; while 

 there have not been wanting naturalists who 

 have classed them with insects, as the smaller 

 kinds of this class seem to demand. 



It is indeed no easy matter to tell to what 

 class in nature lizards are chiefly allied. They 

 are unjustly raised to the rank of beasts, as 

 they bring forth eggs, dispense with breathing, 

 and are not covered with hair. They cannot 

 be placed among fishes, as the majority of 

 them live upon land : they are excluded from 

 the serpent tribe, by their feet, upon which 

 they run with some celerity ; and from the 

 insects, by their size ; for though the Newt 

 may be looked upon in this contemptible light, 

 a Crocodile would be a terrible insect indeed. 

 Thus lizards are, in some measure, excluded 

 from every rank ; while they exhibit some- 

 what of the properties of all ; the legs and 

 celerity of the quadruped ; a facility of creep- 

 through narrow and intricate ways, like 

 serpent ; and a power of living in the 

 like fishes : however, though endued 

 with these various powers, they have no real 

 advantages over any other class of animated 



ing 

 the 



nature ; for what they gain in aptitude for one 

 element, they lose in their fitness for another. 

 Thus, between both, they are an awkward 

 ungainly tribe ; neither so alert upon land, nor 

 so nimble in the water, as the respective in- 

 habitants of either abode : and, indeed, this 

 holds throughout all nature, that in proportion 

 as the seeming advantages of inferior animals 

 are multiplied, their real ones are abridged; 

 and all their instincts are weakened and lost 

 by the variety of channels into which they are 

 divided. 



As lizards thus differ from every other class 

 of animals, they also differ widely from each 

 other. With respect to size, no class of beings 

 has its ranks so opposite. What, for instance, 

 can be more removed than the small Chame- 

 leon, an inch long, and the Alligator of the 

 river Amazons, above twenty-seven feet ? To 

 an inattentive observer, they would appear 

 entirely of different kinds and Seba wonders 

 how they ever came to be classed together. 



The colour of these animals also is very 

 various, as they are found of a hundred dif- 

 ferent hues green, blue, red, chesmit, yellow, 

 spotted, streaked, and marbled. Were colour 

 alone capable of constituting beauty, the lizard 

 would often please ; but there is something so 

 repressing in the animal's figure, that the bril- 

 liancy of its scales, or the variety of its spots, 

 only tend to give an airof more exquisite venom 

 or greater malignity. The figure of these ani- 

 mals is not less various : sometimes swollen 

 in the belly ; sometimes pursed up at the 

 throat ; sometimes with a rough set of spines 

 on the back, like the teeth of a saw ; some- 

 times with teeth, at others with none; some- 

 times venomous at others harmless, and even 



5G* 



