THE LIZARD. iSl 



sliort legs, each with five digits, iiiid travel upon the rocks and 

 over the bushes and trees with considerable dexterity and agility, 

 being essentially aided by a wiggling motion of their bodies and 

 long tails. They always excited in ns such a decidedly repugnant 

 feeling, that we did not consider ourselves at all slighted when 

 we observed on their part an evident desire to avoid us as disa- 

 greeable intruders; and yet these reptiles are decidedly good 

 looking and attractive Avhen contrasted with another genus of the 

 same family in Australia, whose ferocious appearance, armed as 

 they are with horns on their heads and spines on their bodies, 

 liave secured for them the descriptive and suggestive name of 

 '' Horrid Molochs." 



One of our passengers from Nassau to Fernandina in the 

 Western Texas, was Mr. Albert H. Phelps, of West Pawlet, Vt. — 

 a self-educated naturalist, only seventeen or eighteen years of age, 

 liaving a most ardent love for natural history, who, while at 

 Nassau, so taxed and exposed himself in the intensely hot sun, 

 collecting and preserving as many specimens as jiossible of the 

 singular forms of life in and out of the water, that he was at- 

 tacked with a dangerous and malignant fever, and nearly lost 

 liis life. In regard to the New Providence lizards, he in sub- 

 stance said: '*! have tenor more species; some of them, includ- 

 ing their long slender tails, are ten inches long. One, of adark 

 brown color, is very showy. It has five golden spots, and its 

 back is so raised as to form a ridge. It has also a dew lap. 

 After I knocked it down with a cane, the bright colors and the 

 dew lap disappeared, and the re])tile was all of a pale ash color. 

 I killed another before he hud time to change color. It was of 

 an umber brown, with clusters of lemon yellow spots, very minute, 

 so that a little distance off each cluster seemed a little spot. 

 The dew lap Avas a rich shade of dark umber brown, with a rich 

 istripe of yellow 'round the small bone under its jaw, and 'round 



