Mr. A. W. E. O'Shaughnessy on Norops. 183 



it likely you have brought the third kind (rabbit) with you from 

 that country." 



What can we gather from the above extracts from classical 

 authors ? I think we may safely infer that the rabbit was not 

 indigenous either in Greece or Italy in early times. In Greece 

 there is, as far as I can make out, no record of its existence, 

 either in a wild or a domesticated state ; in Italy there is no 

 mention of its occurrence prior to the time of Athenajus (a.d. 

 230), who, as we have seen, observed specimens in his journey 

 from Puteoli to Naples. Once give a couple of rabbits standing- 

 ground either in Italy or Greece, and they surely must have 

 increased in those countries, and consequently have been spe- 

 cially noticed by some classical writer or other. The rabbit, 

 where expressly mentioned, is spoken of as an animal not 

 familiar to the people of Greece and Italy ; it is looked upon 

 as a foreigner, and generally as an inhabitant of Spain or its 

 outlying islands. Consequently, if rabbits exist in large num- 

 bers in either of these countries at the present day, I consider 

 they have been introduced there, as we know they have been 

 in other countries. In the Cyclades a large variety of rabbit 

 is known to exist at present. In his ' Fauna der Cycladen,' 

 Dr. Erhard speaks of this variety being as large as or larger 

 than the common hare. How did these rabbits get to these 

 islands? Were they there in the times of Aristotle and 

 other Greek writers ? Are the present large rabbits of the 

 Cyclades the descendants of those that lived there in the time 

 of the ancients ? It does not seem to me probable that this is 

 the case : I think it more likely that this large variety now 

 inhabiting the Cyclades is descended from some large domestic 

 variety that may have been carried thither, some time or other 

 subsequent to classic times. I should be obliged to any one 

 who will give an opinion on this point. The subject of the 

 natural history of the ancients has been for some time an 

 interesting study to myself, and it is one which, both archffio- 

 logically and zoologically, has some claims upon our attention. 



XXVI. — Notes on Lizards of the Group Anolis. — The Cha- 

 racters and Synonymy of Norops. By ARTHUR W. E. 

 O'Shaughnessy, Senior Assistant in the Natural-History 

 Department of the British Museum. 

 The great disadvantage which one has to contend with in 

 studying the lizards of the group Anolis is, that their brilliant 

 and varied metallic colours, which are so important a charac- 

 teristic of their species, fade, and even vanish completely, in 

 the preserved states of the specimens. A person able to test 



