n6 LIZARDS. 



have led to the disappearance of the little lizard; but on the return of its old 

 friends, it made its entrance as usual at their first dinner, the instant the cloth was 

 removed." Another Indian observer, Colonel Tytler, writing of these house-geckos 

 states that although several species "may inhabit the same locality, yet, as a 

 general rule, they keep separate and aloof from each other; for instance, in a 

 house the dark cellars may be the resort of one species, the roof of another, and 

 the crevices in the walls may be exclusively occupied by a third species. However, 

 at night they issue forth in quest of insects, and may be found mixed up together 

 in the same spot ; but on the slightest disturbance, or when they have done feeding, 

 they return hurriedly to their particular hiding-places." So far as is known, all 

 the members of the family agree with the house-geckos in being insectivorous. 

 With the exception of two peculiar New Zealand species producing living young, 

 all the geckos appear to lay eggs, which are enclosed in a round and hard shell, 

 and are generally two in number. 



A few peculiar geckos, assigned to three genera, and of which 

 Hardwicke's gecko (Eublepharis hardwickei) is one of the best known 

 examples, differ from the true geckos in being furnished with movable eyelids, and 

 also in that their vertebrae are articulated together by means of cup-and-ball joints. 

 Consequently, those eyelid geckos, as they may be termed, form a distinct family 

 Eublepharidce. 



THE SCALE-FOOTED LIZARDS. 

 Family PYGOPODID^. 



To the ordinary observer it might well appear that the whole of the snake-like 

 lizards, or those in which the body has become cylindrical and much elongated, 

 and the limbs either rudimentary or wanting, would pertain to a single family. 

 Such, however, is not the view of modern zoologists, who regard many of these 

 abberrant members of the suborder as having been independently derived from 

 several groups of fully limbed forms, and thus having but little relationship among 

 themselves. Of these snake-like groups, one of the most remarkable is that of the 

 scale-footed lizards of Australia and New Guinea, which form a family comprising 

 six genera, all characterised by the retention of more or less well-marked rudiments 

 of the hind-limbs, although the front pair have quite disappeared externally. 

 According to the opinion of Mr. Boulenger, the scale-foots come nearest to the 

 geckos, with which they agree in the essential characters of their skull, as they do 

 in the nature of their tongue, the want of movable eyelids, and the vertical pupil 

 of the eye ; although the latter character, as being variable in the geckos, cannot 

 be regarded as of much importance. Apart from their external form, they differ 

 from the geckos and thereby resemble the members of the next family in that the 

 inner extremities of the collar-bones are not expanded into a loop-shaped form, 

 while they are peculiar in that the number of bones entering into the composition 

 of each half of the lower jaw is reduced from six to four. The small and numerous 

 teeth are closely set, and have generally long, cylindrical shafts, and blunted 

 summits ; although in the genus Lialis they are sharply pointed, swollen at the 

 base, and backwardly curved, thus resembling those of the monitors. The hinder 



