S38 CLASS REPTILIA. 



Sicily, some of the islands of the Archipelago, the environs of 

 Smyrna, and some provinces of India. When it is menaced, 

 it digs for itself a hole in the sand with so much prompti- 

 tude that, according to Bruce, one would think that it rather 

 found the opportunity of disappearing in a retreat already 

 existing, than the means of preparing one for itself. It 

 is fond of stretching itself in the sun, and runs in a creep- 

 ing pace. In Arabia it is named el adda, and dhab in 

 Abyssinia. 



For a long time the skink has been regarded by the Ara- 

 bian physicians and their followers as a sovereign remedy 

 against certain maladies. Before this it was extolled by 

 Pliny as a specific for the wounds caused by poisoned arrows ; 

 subsequently it has been vaunted as an aphrodisiac, and 

 quackery or ignorance has placed'' it in the rank of those 

 medicaments which merit the distinguished honour of being 

 employed to reanimate the exhausted powers, and to rekindle 

 the fires of love when extinguished by the frosts of age, or 

 the excesses of debauchery. Its flesh has been administered 

 as depurative, excitant, anthelmintic, analeptic, anti-can- 

 cerous, sialagogue, and anti-siphyphilitic. Notwithstanding 

 that this confused mass of medical properties, thus put to- 

 gether without discrimination, as if to form the vade mecum 

 of some empiric, now appears completely ridiculous, yet even 

 at the present day, in many countries, fables are still pub- 

 lished respecting the success of this remedy. In spite, how- 

 ever, of the discredit into which it has fallen among the 

 faculty in general, it does not appear to be totally devoid of 

 efficacy in some complaints. 



The oriental physicians still continue to recommend it 

 against elephantiasis, and all cutaneous maladies; also against 

 ophthalmia, and even cataract. 



After so many virtues, real or pretended, it is not at all 

 astonishing that in the south of Kgypt the skink should be 



