124 THE KEPTILES OF EGYPT. 
This well-known lizard is very common along the sea-face of the delta, and is 
especially numerous around Alexandria, where, when the sun is shining, there is 
scarcely a garden wall or a stony slope on which it may not be seen jerking its head 
after the fashion of its kind. It is extremely wary, and when disturbed seeks for 
shelter in the crevices of rocks and walls and among stones. I unexpectedly found it 
abundant under old flattened-out oil-tins lying among heaps of rubbish by the sides of 
the road in the market gardens at Gabari. When pursued it betook itself to the 
nearest tree, running up the highest palm with the greatest ease. 
I have neither observed it in the neighbourhood of Cairo nor to the south of that 
city. 
This species is distributed over S.E. Europe, the islands of Cyprus, Mykonos, Milo, 
Cephalonia, Paro, Delos, Chios, &c, also over Asia Minor, Syria, Northern Arabia, 
the Sinaitic Peninsula, and the northern coast-line of Egypt 1 . A specimen has been 
recorded from Tetuan, on the African coast, to the east of the Straits of Gibraltar, but 
Mr. Boulenger suggests that it may probably have been imported. 
It is known to the Arabs as vii &^-=hardim. 
The excrement of this lizard was in olden times highly prized in the east as a 
precious cosmetique, but it has now wholly fallen into disuse. It was known under 
the names of Cordylea or Crocodilea and Stercus lacerti. 
The lizard A. annectens, Blanford 2 , which serves to connect the " Stellio " section of 
the genus with such forms as A. planiceps, Peters, and through it with the A. colonorum 
group, occurs in Abyssinia and in Western Somaliland. On the Goolis Mountains, 
inland from Berbera, another allied form, A. phiUipsii 5 , Blgr., is found; and on the 
coast of Massowah, and also in the centre of Abyssinia, at an elevation of 7000 ft., and 
in Western Somaliland, at 5000 ft. above the sea, still another, viz. A. cyanoga'der 4 , 
Riippell, occurs. According to A. Dumeril's Catalogue, the latter has also been 
obtained in Arabia, if Botta's specimen was really from that locality, which seems 
-doubtful, as A. Dumeril, in the introduction to his Catalogue, states that M. Botta's 
collections were made in the region of the Nile. 
In Western Somaliland there is an interesting form, A. zonura, Blgr. 5 , that serves, 
according to Mr. Boulenger, to link the " Stellios " with the somewhat remarkable 
lizard A. batillifera 6 (also from Somaliland), which he considers should be regarded as 
the type of a subgenus Xenagama, on account of the extreme flattening and abbreviation 
The lizard mentioned in Lefebvre's Voy. en Abyss, vi. Zool. p. 201, under the name of Stellio vulgaris, 
may probably be A. annectens, Blanford, Zool. of Abyss. 1870, p. 446. 
3 Zool. Abyss. 1870, p. 446, fig. 
3 Ann. & Mag. N. H. (6) xvi. 1895, p. 167, pi. vii. fig. 3. 
4 Neue Wirbelth. 1835, Eept. p. 10, pi. v. 
* Proc. Zool. Soc. 1895, p. 533, pi. xxix. fig. 3. 
• Faune et Flore des Pays £omalis, 1882, Eept. & Batr. p. 10, pi. ii. 
