STENODACTYLUS. 37 
named Stenodactylus, using the specific name for the generic term, and designating the 
species S. elegans. The following x is a figure of one of the types from the Berlin 
Museum. 
Fig. 1. 
"i 
Stenodactylus elegans, Fitzinger. $ . 
One of the types of Ascalabotes sthenodactylus, Licht., from Berlin Museum. 
Baron Cuvier, in the new edition of the ' Regne Animal,' published in 1829, adopted 
the genus Stenodactylus and named the species S. guttatus, basing it on certain figures 
in the ' Description de l'Egypte.' One of these figures (plate v. fig. 2) is in every 
way so crude that it is impossible to gain from it any idea of what may have been the 
characters of the lizard which it was intended to represent. A second figure, however 
(Suppl. plate i. fig. 3) (not Suppl. plate i. fig. 2, as stated by Cuvier, which is 
Pti/odactylus lobatus = P. hasselquistii, Donndorff), he held represented the same 
species. This figure, taken as a whole, is a good likeness of S. elegans, Fitzinger, the 
Asc. sthenodactylus, Licht. The other figure on Suppl. plate i., viz. fig. 4, Cuvier 
regarded as a species distinct from S. guttatus, but allied to it. 
The figure on which Cuvier based his S. guttatus (plate v. fig. 2) was described by 
Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire as " VAgame ponctue " 2 , and Dumeril and Bibron state 
that the description of the latter author was drawn up from a very imperfectly executed 
coloured drawing. 
While we learn nothing from pi. v. fig. 2, the figure (fig. 3) on Suppl. plate i. 
leaves no doubt as to the characters of Cuvier's S. guttatus, which is unquestionably 
identical with the Ascalabotes sthenodactylus, Licht. 
1 By the courtesy of Dr. Tornier, of the Berlin Museum, I have, by means of an exchange with that 
Institution, become possessed of one of Lichtenstein's types (figured above) preserved in its original bottle, 
and labelled " Ascalabotes sthenodactylus, Cuv., Stenodactylus elegans, Fitzinger ; Nubia, Hemprich and 
Ehrenberg." 
2 Is. Geoffr. St.-Hilaire, in 1855, in a footnote to his introduction to the work entitled ' Voyage autour 
du Monde sur la Fregatte Venus,' gives 1827 as the date of his parts of«the Eeptiles and Fishes of the 
' Description de l'Egypte.' Born 16th December, 1805, he was appointed assistant to his father in 1824. 
