172 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 



haunting the banks of rivers. The varan is so like the croco- 

 dile, and makes such an approach to it in bulk, that the 

 Egyptians believe it to spring from an egg of that animal 

 which has been hatched in dry earth. The skin of the vara- 

 nians is " furnished with enchased scales, which are tubercu- 

 lous, projecting, rounded upon the head as well as upon the 

 back and sides, always distributed in rings or circular bands, 

 parallel under the belly and round the tail." The teeth are 

 planted in a furrow, and curve backward. Next may be 

 mentioned the Lacertidae, or True Lizards, of which the only 

 living examples are small insect-eating animals, in a great 

 variety of specific forms, scattered over the warm and tem- 

 perate countries of the Old World ; the least repulsive of all 

 reptiles, often indeed of beautiful form and colouring. In 

 intimate alliance with them may be placed the Geckos, which 

 are of nocturnal habits, and the Chameleons, which again are 

 inhabitants of trees, all of these being likewise insectivorous. 

 In palaeontology, the lacertian animals date from an earlier 

 time than any other Sauria. The huge extinct Monitors of 

 the Thuringian Zechstein, the thecodonts of the nearly con- 

 temporary dolomitic conglomerate of Redland near Bristol, 

 were the patriarchs of these families, and are the earliest 

 fossil reptiles certainly known to us. The Mosasaurus, Geo- 

 saurus, and Megalosaurus, were likewise huge early speci- 

 mens of this division of the sauria. Finally, we have the 

 Iguanida, the most harmless of all the Sauria, being gene- 

 rally restricted to a vegetable diet ; likewise small animals in 

 our time, but exemplified at a former period in the enormous 

 iguanodon of the Wealden. To this family belong the anolis, 

 stellio, dragons, basilisks, and other species. 



The serpents ( Ophzdia) are usually placed as a distinct 

 order of reptiles ; such was the arrangement of Cuvier ; but 

 Merrem and several other modern naturalists of high cha- 

 racter, place them in connexion with the squamate sauria ; 

 and there, undoubtedly, natural classification requires that 

 they should be. From those sauria to the ophidia, there is 

 such a series of transitional forms in the scinks and chalcidse, 

 where we see the body gradually becoming elongated and 



