MABUIA QUINQUET^ENIATA. 189 
from the chin to the chest and the sides of the neck are intensely black, more or less 
spotted with bluish or bluish white, and the lower yellowish-white longitudinal band 
which begins at the sides of the nostril is, occasionally, orange-yellow as far back as 
the shoulder, suffused with blue and spotted with yellow. The five yellowish dorsal 
bands, frequently in adults and more especially in males, become entirely lost or 
only faintly indicated. The young are always longitudinally banded. The females 
are always much less intensely coloured than the males, and the throat is never 
black but is generally spotted with dusky blue or brownish purple. Upper surfaces 
of the limbs usually uniform brown, but spotted with yellow in breeding males. 
Under surface generally yellowish white, with occasionally some bluish spots on the 
sides of the belly, but in half-grown specimens and in the young, immaculate white. 
The upper surface of the tail paler than the back, with the white dorsal bands 
prolonged on to it in a varying degree ; its base frequently suffused with vivid blue 
iD half-grown specimens. 
This is the most common lizard in the Nile valley and is essentially a species of the 
alluvium. It abounds along the banks of the Nile, along canals and embankments, on 
roadsides, and about villages. At Edfu, some boys collected 60 in two hours. It 
produces 7 eggs on an average at a time, aod in the months of January and February 
the males are in their full breeding-colours. 
Dr. J. C. Mitchell has written to me that he has observed a curious habit on the 
part of a lizard which, from his description, I believe to be M. qninquetceniata. He says 
that " the British officers at the Mess House at Assuan often amused themselves on 
Friday mornings (their free day) by catching a few scorpions, which abound among the 
stones, and throwing them in proximity to one of these lizards, when it would, 
regardless of their presence, rush at a scorpion and attack it with great ferocity. The 
scorpion would erect his tail and watch every movement of his four-footed adversary, 
After many attempts to get at close quarters the lizard invariably bit the scorpion at 
the base of the tail, when the latter remained still as if paralyzed, and the former 
withdrew. Often the fight would go on under our breakfast table in the open 
air, and in many contests I witnessed I never saw a lizard stung ; but 1 could never 
discover marks of the lizard's jaw on the scorpion, neither did the victor eat the 
vanquished." 
M. quinquetceniata is distributed over tropical Africa, as it is present in Benguela, 
Senegal, Mozambique, Somaliland, Abyssinia, Eritrea, Suakin, and Wadi Haifa. Along 
the Nile valley it extends to the shores of the Mediterranean and into the Sinaitic 
Peninsula and Syria. It has also been recorded from Cyprus by Steindachner. 
The native name of the two Egyptian species of this genus is lJj"^- <y-^"" = sihliya 
khudari, which, I am told, means the lizard of the green beans, possibly from its habit 
of frequenting the fields on the alluvium. 
