858 ME. NELSON ANNANDALE ON THE [Dec. 4, 



and of deep purple. The female is very like the male, except that 

 she is smaller, that her colouring is not so brilliant, and that the 

 blue markings are almost entirely absent from her under surface. 

 When the Lizard is running about the sand its brilliant shades are 

 not conspicuous, for the lower surface is hidden beneath the body, 

 and the bars on the sides are almost concealed in the folds of 

 loose skin which are present in the living specimen. Liolepis is 

 exceedingly timid and very agile ; as a rule one does not see it 

 until it commences to run away, at the distance of several yards. 

 It lives in burrows, which it excavates, so the Malays say, by 

 means of its feet and its snout. When one of the males is taken 

 in the hand, it attempts to bite, for it has sharp teeth and a 

 strong jaw, and struggles violently. As it struggles, it flattens 

 out its body, by enlarging the lower angle formed by the ribs with 

 the vertebral column, so that the purple and orange stripes on its 

 sides come into view. The female tries the same tactics, but 

 without such great effect, for in her case neither are the stripes 

 so brilliant nor the ribs so mobile. It is very possible that the 

 male makes some display ' before the female at the time of court- 

 ship. The Malays say that the " Biaivak Pasir " is monogamous, 

 and on many different occasions, at Biserat and elsewhere, children 

 brought me two specimens together, male and female, which they 

 said they had snared in a single hole. The case of the Lizard is not 

 quite parallel to that of the Grasshopper, for it is evident that in 



1 That reptiles do indulge in nuptial dances is proved by the case of the 

 " Stimpah-sumpah " (Calotes versicolor), a Lizard whose great powers of changing 

 its colour have caused the colonists of the Straits to misname it the Chameleon. 

 When the male is courting the female, he is of a pale yellow colour early in the 

 day, though in the afternoon he appears to become slightly darker ; and he has 

 a very conspicuous black patch a on either side of the throat which calls attention, 

 as it were, to the gular pouches, that he is constantly inflating. He posts 

 himself on some conveniently conspicuous perch, such as the top of a fence or a 

 banana leaf, with his tail stretched out behind him and his fore-quarters raised 

 as high as possible upon the legs. The head is held very erect, but is con- 

 stantly being nodded up and down, very much in the same way as that of 

 a cock pigeon is nodded under similar circumstances. He opens and shuts his 

 mouth continually, as if he were chattering, but no sound is emitted ; it is 

 probably this habit which has given the Lizard its Malay name, which seems to 

 be connected with a word (sunipah) that means to curse. In this manner the 

 male advances gradually towards the female, only progressing a few steps at a 

 time. The female remains concealed during the performance, which often 

 commences at a considerable distance from her retreat. I found on several 

 occasions that if one male was killed while dancing, his place was taken by 

 another before many hours had passed. If he was captured, the black spots 

 disappeared from his throat immediately ; but they reappeared after death. 

 The males of this Lizard are extremely pugnacious, and when they are fighting 

 together they change colour repeatedly, the victor usually assuming a reddish 

 tinge. The females differ from the males in most species of this genus in that 

 the gular pouches and the nuchal and dorsal crest are smaller than in the 

 other sex ; also they do not seem to have the power of colour-change so well 

 developed. 



a See also Capt. Stanley Flower's paper on " The Reptiles of the Malay 

 Peninsula and Siam," in the ' Proceedings ' of this Society, 1899, p. f>41. My 

 observations were made in Bangkok, Singora, and Patalung, in the months of 

 March and April. 



