TEE GECKOS. 



287 



body ; its head is very short, rounded in front, square, and about as broad as high : the neck is short 

 and the tail is short and pointed. It is not as prickly as the Moloch, but there are eight sharp radi- 

 ating spines on the back of the head, and rows of scales keeled and spined on the flanks. The head is 

 of a red-brown colour, yellowish beneath, spotted with brown, more or less, and the upper part of the 

 body is of a dull sand tint or leathery colour. There is a large brown spot on each side of the throat, 



and the back is spotted with the same colour, and the spines are brownish. The length of this 

 very iigly reptile is under six inches. It appears to live on insects, and to inhabit the hill country 

 of Central Mexico. Another kind, of which a specimen was in the Zoological 

 Gardens, is the Horned Lizard,* which comes from Texas. 



THE GECKO FAMILY. THE ASCALABOTES, OR GECKOTID^. 



Curiously-shaped thick-bodied Lizards, with clawed, flattened-out toes, 

 running up straight walls and hunting spiders inside houses, were common 

 objects of natural history to the Greeks, and Aristophanes, and Theophrastus 

 called them &<r/caAa&>Tijs, a name perpetuated by Aristotle. They are in- 

 teresting on account of their very world-wide distribution, for they are 

 found in the hottest parts of the Americas, of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, 

 and Oceania, and in several of the larger islands, and this diffusion, insular 

 and continental, together with the amphicrelian nature of the bodies cf 

 their vertebrae, f indicates the antiquity of the group. 



Species of one genus of the family may be seen in the South of 

 France, and in most Mediterranean countries, and a common kind, which 

 scampers up and down walls, runs along the ceiling, and holds on and 

 turns where the surface is often slippery and upright, belongs to the PlatydactylL It is 



* Phrynosovia cornutum. t That is to say, they are hollowed out in front and behind. 



TOES OF GECKO, 

 fa) Under surface. 



