284 NATURAL HISTORY. 



trunk is rather slender, and is covered above and below with very small keeled scales. Large spaces 

 on the parachutes are naked and separated by stripes of minute scales. The tail is long, slender, 

 tapering, and not breakable. The hands are slender, and each has five long, thin, clawed toes. 

 It is said that the transcendent beauty of their colours baffles description. As the Dragon lies in 

 shade along the trunk of a tree, its colours at a distance appear like a mixture of brown and grey, 

 and render it scarcely distinguishable from the bark. Thus it remains with no signs of life, except 

 the restless eyes watching passing insects, which, suddenly expanding its wings, it seizes with a rapid 

 leap. The outer part of the upper surfaces of the " wings " is ornamented with large irregular black 

 dots on an orange or rose-coloured ground, fringed with silver. Besides this, the structure of the 

 wing produces iridescent tints, and they flash as they move through the air from branch to branch. 

 The throat and sac are bright yellow, dotted with black, and the side folds are silvery, rose, or 

 yellow. Below the wing are light brown or black spots. This colouring applies to the description of 

 the common species of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Penang, and Singapore. The spotted Draco, with the 

 lower part of the wing whitish, with sometimes an isolated black spot, is continental, having been 

 found in Siarn ; and Draco dussumieri is the kind found in the forests of the west coast of 

 Hindostan. 



Mr. Moseley noticed the habits of this Flying Lizard in the Philippine Islands. They frequent 

 the lower trees. They spring from tree to tree, and from branch to branch, but they pass through 

 the air so quickly that the extension of their parachute is hardly noticed during the flight. He 

 states : " We had several of them alive on board the ship for a day or two, where they flew from 

 one leg of the table to another." 



The FRILLED LIZARD* is one of the remarkable Australian animals which, whilst possessing the 

 structures common to others found elsewhere, have a peculiar and almost anomalous conformation. 

 Mr. A. Cunningham, in his Journal on "Australian Discovery under Capt. Parker King, F.R.S.," 

 describes the capture of the first specimen, which was taken off a branch of a tree, in Careening Bay, 

 Port Nelson : " I secured a Lizard of extraordinary appearance, which had perched itself upon the 

 stem of a small decayed tree. It had a curious crenated membrane, like a ruff or tippet round its 

 neck, covering its shoulders, and when it was expanded, which it was enabled to do by means of 

 transverse slender cartilages, it spi-eads five inches in the form of an open umbrella. Its head was 

 rather large, and the eyes, whilst living, were rather prominent ; its tongue, although bifid, was short 

 and thick, and appeared to be tubular." Captain King stated that the colour of the tongue and inside 

 of the mouth was yellow. The frill arises from the hinder part of the head, and is attached to the 

 sides of the neck and extends down to the front of the chest. It is supported above by a lunate car- 

 tilage arising from the hinder part of the ear, and in the centre by a bone which extends about half 

 its length, and is a prolongation of the hyoid. There are four plaits in the frill, and the front edge is 

 serrated ; the outer surface has keeled scales, and the inner is quite smooth. The colour of the long- 

 tailed creature is yellowish-brown variegated with black. It has long toes which are very unequal, 

 and the claws are hooked and horn-coloured. 



The next family of the Crassilingues contains those thick-tongued Lizards which are terrestrial 

 and not arboreal in their habits, and which have the body broad and flat and the skin covered more 

 or less with spiny scales. They are principally dwellers in deserts and sandy places, but some are 

 found in damp situations, and are called the Agamidse. One group is restricted to the Old World 

 and Australia, and another to the New World. They differ in the position of the teeth, those of the 

 Old World being acrodont, and those of the New World pleurodont, but it is very remarkable that 

 some of the genera of the one hemisphere should be represented in the other by forms which 

 resemble them in many points of structure and habits. 



THE TERRESTRIAL AGAMID^E OF THE OLD WORLD AND AUSTRALIA. 



The Thorn-tailed Agamas form the genus Uromastix, and they have the body clothed with small 

 scales and a large flattish tail ornamented with rings of large spiny scales, which contrasts with the 

 rest of the rather smooth body. The Dabb, or Dhobb,f of the Arabs is one of them, and is at least 



* Chlamydosaurus (King). f Uromastix spinipes. 



