AGAMA SINA1TA. 107 
the snout ; digits moderately long, the third digit the longest. Tail about twice as long 
as the head and body, rather broad at the base and depressed, the remainder laterally 
compressed. Scales on the head large, most so on the supraorbital area, where they 
are flat and tessellate or slightly imbricate in arrangement, but more or less obscurely, 
excentrically acuminate or ridged on the upper surface of the snout, where they are 
more irregular in form and size ; on the occipito-parietal region they are also occa- 
sionally more or less feebly pointed ; a series of large scales in an antero-posterior 
oblique line midway between the ear and the posterior angle of the orbit ; an enlarged 
triangular scale near the lower end of the anterior border of the ear, variously 
developed; no spines on the head or neck. Body covered with equal more or 
less imbricate keeled or nearly smooth scales, very regular in their arrangement, and 
with no enlarged scales scattered among them, but with the mesial dorsal lines of 
scales larger than the ventral s and rapidly diminishing in size towards the sides, where 
the scales are smaller than the ventrals. Ventrals smooth or feebly keeled here and 
there. Limbs covered with keeled imbricate scales, those on the under surface 
small and smooth : under surface of the digits covered with small brown spines. 
The scales on the tail strongly carinated, and three times as large as the largest 
dorsal scales, more or less imbricate, but not arranged in verticils. 
No gular pouch. Males with 4 to 8 praeanal pores, more or less present in adult 
females. 
Colour : head yellowish, sometimes suffused with blue above, and in adult males its 
under surface from the chin to the chest rich blue ; the same area in females yellow, 
or yellow marbled with dark bluish-grey lines. Upper surface and limbs may either 
be a pale reddish yellow or a dusky bluish yellow ; a broad reddish-brown band across 
the neck ending in an intensely blue area before the shoulder ; a large deep rusty red 
spot on either side behind the shoulder, separated from each other in the mesial line, 
and a similar but smaller spot on each side of the loins before the hind limbs ; sides of 
the body occasionally dusky greyish with obscure pale spots ; the base of the tail with 
a number of similarly coloured bars ; general colour of under surface yellowish white. 
I first met with this lizard on the grey stony desert plateau immediately above the 
Wadi Hoaf. It was resting at midday by the side of the footpath, with its blue head 
erect, but, as I approached it, it disappeared with remarkable rapidity under some stones 
and was lost ; but a few days afterwards I went back to the spot and captured three 
specimens. I never observed it again near Heluan, but I obtained one on the stony 
desert between Suez and the Ataka mountains. 
Its food appears to consist largely of ants, and in capturing them it swallows a 
considerable quantity of sand. 
The large female from Guarda was gravid, five eggs being in the left and four in the 
right oviduct; and as each egg measured about 15 millim. in length, the abdomen was 
enormously distended. The rectum, full of the debris of ants mixed with fine sand, 
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