PTYODACTYLUS IIAKSELQUISTU. 75 
dark recesses of monuments and temples, and in the Sinaitic Peninsula in the moist 
warm grotto of Hamman Faruu. Shoa, where it is also present, has been described 
by M. Aubry 1 as a country of high mountains covered with dense luxuriant vegetation, 
of streams breaking into numerous cascades and winding through magnificent prairies, 
of fields of cotton, maize, tief (the grass of the country), wheat, barley, beans, and 
peas, a region in which reigns perpetual spring. 
I have frequently met with it in the daytime in the chambers of temples and on 
their walls outside, and I have captured it at midday on rocks in the desert. It is said 
to be common in native houses, but I have never observed it in any of the hotels I 
have resided in at Alexandria, Suez, Cairo, Mena, Heluan, Assiut, Luxor, and Assuan. 
It emits a cry that has aptly been compared by Sir J. G. Wilkinson to the sound 
made by a man in urging on a horse- 
There is a native superstition that certain kinds of food become poisoned by contact 
with this gecko, and if eaten produce leprosy ; and Hasselquist states that at Cairo he 
saw the hand of a man, over which a gecko had run, become in an instant covered with 
red pustules and inflamed, accompanied by itching like that caused by the sting of a 
nettle. Cuvier has suggested that this may have been produced by the extremely fine 
claws of the gecko. 
The natives of Egypt, in harmony with their superstition regarding this lizard, and 
in reference to the white leprous colour of those that frequent human habitations and 
the recesses of buildings and caverns, call it fjoy y\, abu bors, the father of lepers. 
I am indebted to Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, for having directed my 
attention to the most interesting work of Damiri 2 on animals, in Arabic, entitled 
' Hayat ul-Hayawan ' (' The Life of Animals, or a Dictionary of Zoology '), written in the 
latter half of the 14th century. Mr. Ellis informs me that, as the term ^jej>., bors, does 
not occur in Damirl's work, it cannot be regarded as classical. I have found it in 
common use with the Arabs of the present day for all the species of geckos, whether 
they be leprous-looking or not. 
Dr. Walter Innes has informed me that this lizard has also another name, uJi^^l, 
abu kaff. The latter term kaff means in Arabic the palm of the hand ; so I conclude 
this name refers to the distention of the digits of this gecko. 
The figure of a lizard, to the ancient Egyptians, signified " many " or " multitude." 
As a few illustrations of its occurrence on the monuments as a hieroglyph may be 
mentioned its presence on the tomb of Ptah Hotep ; on the outer wall of the hypostyle 
of Karnak ; on the temples of Luxor and Abu Simbul ; and on a slab of red granite that 
1 E. Geogr. Soc. Paris, 1S86. 
2 His real name was Kemal iid-den Abu'l Baga Muhammed Ben Musa Ben Isa ad-Damiri Ash-Shafei ; but 
he was known as Damiri, probably from his having been born in the town of that name to the north of 
Mansura. The date of his birth -was 1349 a.d., and he died in 1405. He was a professor in two of the 
mosques in Cairo. (Nouv. Biogr. Gen. (Hoefer) xiv. 1855, p. 474.) 
c2 
