102 THE REPTILES OF EGYPT. 
plains that slope down to the Nile and on which the lines of drainage are marked by 
the presence of tufts of a stunted vegetation. It is also found penetrating into the 
desert along the deep waterworn wadis, which also support a variety of plants. The 
vegetation attracts the insects on which the lizards subsist. It is prevalent also in the 
semi-desert tracts at the mouth of the delta, and is found not far from the sea in 
suitable localities. 
It is remarkably active, and when pursued runs with great rapidity, seeking for 
shelter under stones and among the tufts of vegetation. 
There are generally five eggs in each gravid oviduct. 
It occurs in various parts of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and Count Peracca has recorded 
it from Northern Syria (Damascus) associated with Agama ruderata, Oliv. It is found 
on both sides of the Nile valley, but none of my specimens come further from the 
south than the plain of Tel el Amarna. 
I have examined the types of A. pallida, A. leucostigma, A. nigrofasciata, and 
A. loricata, and I cannot detect that they are in any way specifically distinct. The 
type of A. loricata, Reuss, was from Upper Egypt. It has been identified by some 
herpetologists with A. ruderata, Oliv., but, as already said, no lizard with the characters 
of the latter species has ever been found in Egypt, so far as I am aware. 
The head of this species is broad and high between the eyes, the muzzle is short, 
and thus in its general characters the head is very similar to that of A. mutabilis. 
The nostril is situated on the canthus rostralis, and is thus more internal than the 
nostril of A. ruderata. I have failed to detect any essential difference between the 
nostrils of this species and that of A. mutabilis. I make this statement because 
I attempted to separate out the two forms by their nostrils irrespective of other 
characters and failed to do so, as they all fell under the one category of the " nostril 
on the canthus rostralis." 
The head-scales are smooth in the sense that they are not prominently rugose as in 
A. ruderata ; but, in the specimens enumerated, they present more or less rugosity, 
and an illustration of this is found in the female from the Mokattam Hills and 
another from Tel el Amarna. In the former some of the head-scales are ridged and 
others covered sparsely with little tubercular eminences, while in the latter specimen 
they are irregularly covered with ridges. A similar condition is also present on the 
head-scales of a male from the plain of Kafr Gamus, where this lizard is not at all 
uncommon. On the area between the eye and the ear there is an enlarged group of 
scales, some of the scales being larger than the others and more or less ridged and 
keeled. Along the upper margin of the ear-orifice there are generally three downwardly 
pointed scales, and on the back of the head and on the nape some scattered spinose 
scales, but not always present and of no great prominence. The depressed body is 
covered uniformly with small scales of nearly equal size, rather feebly imbricate and 
tending to juxtaposition, a character which separates this species from A. mutabilis. 
