OF FROGS, LIZARDS, AND SERPENTS. 



BOOK It. 



OF LIZARDS. 



CHAP. I. 



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 nature. 

 Ray, rather struck with the number of their 

 legs than their habits and conformation, has 

 exalted them among quadrupeds ; while Lin- 

 naeus, attentive only to their long slender 

 torms, 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 breath- 

 ing, and are not covered with hair. They 

 cannot be placed among fishes, as the major- 

 ity 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 somewhat 

 of the properties of all ; the legs and celerity 

 of the quadruped ; a facility of creeping 

 through narrow and intricate ways, like the 

 serpent; and a power of living in the water, 

 like fishes ; however, though endued with these 

 various powers, they have no real advantages 

 over any other class of animated 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 nim- 

 ble in the water, as the respective inhabitanls 

 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 be- 

 ings has its ranks so opposite. What, for in- 

 stance, can be more removed than the small 

 cameleon, an inch long, arid the alligator of 

 the river Amazon, 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 va- 

 rious, as they are found of a hundred different 

 hues green, blue, red, chestnut, yellow, 

 spotted, streaked, and marbled. Were colour 

 alone capable of constituting beauty, the liz- 

 ard would often please ; but there is some- 

 thing so repressing in the animal's figure, that 

 the brilliancy of its scales, or the variety of its 

 spots, only tend to give an air of more exqui- 

 site venom or greater malignity. The figure 

 of these animals 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; 

 sometimes with teeth, at others with none ; 

 sometimes venomous, at others harmless, and 

 even philanthropic : sometimes smooth and 

 even ; sometimes with a long slender tail ; and 

 often with a shorter blunt one. 1 



i The whole of this tribe is perfectly destitute of pol- 



