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NATURAL HISTORY. 



In Bushire, Major St. John found these Lizards sitting outside their holes in the evening, and 

 a British terrier with him killed two, one of which had attacked him. They are generally very gentle, 

 and are vegetable feeders, possessing a long intestine. 



The extraordinary prickly-looking Lizard of Australia, which is called the Thorn-devil, or Horrible 

 Moloch,* belongs to this group, and is about six inches or less in length. Its little head is horned 

 with prickles of large size, and rows of them exist on the bulged-out body. They are on the tail in 

 crests, as it were, and on the limbs. 



There is a North African genus of this group which extends into Western Asia, One of the 

 species is from Afghanistan, t but the commonest one found in Egypt is spineless, and the scales of 



DAUB. OR DHOBB. 



it are small, there being no pores on the inside of the thighs. It is interesting from the habit which 

 it has of puffing out its body so as to enlarge its dimensions, and from the gift of being able 

 to change its colour even more promptly than the Chani8eleons.J 



A fine Lizard, known to the ancients, belongs to the genus Stellio. In Egypt it attains the 

 length of more than two feet, and it has a flat swollen body, and the tail is ringed with scales which 

 are spiny on the tip of it. A dweller in the desert and rocky districts, it is also an inhabitant of 

 Palestine, and is said even now to extend into Turkey and the Islands of the ^Egean, and possibly 

 it is found in Cyprus. 



The next group of the terrestrial Agamids is essentially American. In their shape and habits these 

 large and squat-bodied Lizards resemble those just noticed from the Old World and Australia, and the 

 first of them to be noticed as the Toad Lizards are closely allied in structure and method of life to 

 the Moloch of Australia. One of these, called the Tapayaxin,|| is very toad-like in the shape of its 



* Moloch horridus. f Trapelw megalonyx. J Trapelus cegyptiacus. 



|| Phrynosoma orbiculare. 



Stellio spinipes. 



