54 



THE GEISSOSAURT. 



sides which are rounded. Upon the head the plates are rather long, keeled, and pro- 

 ject very slightly over each other. The ears are distinct. The color of the Anguine 

 Lizard is brown, and along each side runs a long yellow streak. 



A SECOND tribe of Lizards now comes before our notice. These are the GEISSOSAURI, 

 a title derived from two Greek words, the former signifying the eaves of a house, and 

 the latter a Lizard. As in this tribe there are many families, and more than eighty 

 genera, it will be impossible to give more than a very slight account of these reptiles, or 

 even to mention more than a small number selected as types of the large or small 

 groups which they represent. 



Indeed, the lower we descend in the scale of creation, the more numerous the species 

 seem to become, and the more perplexing is the task of selecting those species which 

 are worthy of mention on account of their scientific characteristics, and yet possess 

 sufficient individuality to interest the general reader. 



To watch the greater number of reptiles in their wild state, is a task simply impos- 

 sible for any human being to achieve. Many reptiles live in dry and thirsty lands, 

 where no creatures but the white ant and the Lizard seem to acquire moisture, and 

 through which the traveller can only pass with hasty steps, dreading the delay of each 

 minute lest his precious store of water should fail, and leave him to perish by the 

 most terrible of deaths. 



Others reside on the sides of precipitous rocks, over which the enterprising traveller 

 can only pass at hazard of life and limb, and in any case would not be able to watch 

 the proceedings of the shy and timid Lizards that find their home among these craggy 

 recesses, and retreat into them on the slightest alarm. But the chief residence of 

 the reptile race is to be found in hot climates, and in low, swampy ground, where the 

 morasses are ever filled with decaying vegetable matter, and exhale a soft, thick 

 miasma, as deadly to the white man as the fumes of arsenic, and injurious even to the 

 dark-skinned native, who can breathe unharmed a fetid atmosphere that would smite 

 down his white master as quickly and surely as if he were struck with a bullet, and 

 who only attains his fullest development under these conditions. 



In these dread regions, their seething putridity concealed by all the luxuriant veg- 

 etation of tropical climes, like a royal mantle flung over a festering corpse, the reptile 

 race abound, the poisoned air being to these creatures the very breath of life, and the 

 surrounding decay the sustaining power of their existence. Indeed, the object of their 

 lives seems to be, by individual transmutation of poisons into living flesh, to destroy 

 by slow but certain degrees the mass of decaying vegetation, and so to prepare an abid- 

 ing place for beings of a higher order than themselves. 



On placing ourselves even in imagination amid such scenes, we seem to be trans- 

 ported back into the former ages of our earth, when man could find no resting-place 

 for his foot, and no atmosphere which he could breathe and live ; when the greater 

 part of the soil was little more than soft mud, the air thick, dank, heavy, and over- 

 charged with decomposition, and the multitude of strange reptiles that bored their 

 slimy way through the deep ooze, crawled lazily upon the slowly hardening banks, or 

 urged their devious course through the turbid waters, were the physically ruling 

 though morally subservient powers of the world. 



Little is wanting to complete the illusion except to give to every object an increase 

 of dimensions, for the vegetation of those days was rank and luxuriant to a degree 

 that is now well indicated, though on a smaller scale, by the foliage of the tropics, and 

 the huge forms of the ancient and now extinct reptile race are closely reproduced by 

 the more familiar inhabitants of the swamp before us. 



As the expanse of putrefaction was greater in those epochs, so the miasma destroy- 

 ers were larger. Frogs and toads as big as calves, reptilian quadrupeds as large 

 as elephants, and reptilian bats expanding leathery wings as wide as those of the 

 pelican, were fit inhabitants of the atmosphere which they breathed, and in which 

 their mission was consummated. Now that the marshy districts are smaller and less 

 poisonous, the reptile race that inhabits them is of smaller dimensions. 



The earth has now been so far purified by successive generations and regenerations of 



