206 THE REPTILES OF EGYPT. 
no brown bars across the back, but only short dusky areas corresponding to their 
position occur along the sides; each scale is finely margined with brownish, but no 
white streaks are present. 
Measurements of the largest male from Gizeh : — Snout to vent 112 millim., tail 
67 millim. 
It attains, however, to a considerably greater size, one example in the British 
Museum measures as follows : — Snout to vent 147 millim., tail 77 millim. 
This well-known lizard is not at all uncommon in the desert about the Pyramids of 
Gizeh, but it occurs only in the accumulations of drift-sand. I have on a number of 
occasions let individuals loose to watch their movements and without any fear of losing 
them, as when once the lizard is covered with the sand its movements are neither so 
quick nor does it go so deep that it cannot be recaptured with ease, if it is carefully 
watched. When let loose it runs a few paces and then begins to hide itself by first 
thrusting its sharp wedge-shaped snout into the sand with its hind limbs laid back- 
wards against the tail ; and when the body is wriggled under up to the hind limbs, it 
uses these members and a spiral movement of the tail to complete its disappearance. 
The method by which it propels itself into the loose sand and the ease with which it 
is accomplished forcibly remind one of an act of swimming, and hence it has well 
earned the name " fish of the sand." It has been described in a number of old works 
devoted to fish. 
Lefebvre collected a number of individuals of this scink during an excursion he 
made into the oasis of Baharieh, in 1828. He found them on hillocks of fine light 
sand accumulated by the south wind at the base of the hedges and tamarisks that 
border the cultivated land, on the confines of the desert. In such situations, he 
observed the scink sunning itself, but running from time to time after insects 
(Coleoptera) that might pass within its reach. He says that in a few instants it 
would penetrate the sand to the depth of many feet, and that it made no attempt to 
bite or scratch with its claws when captured, although it made efforts to escape. 
The Bedouins recognize its trail on the sands and dig it out very dexterously with 
their hands, and any I have seen captured were never more than a few inches, twelve 
at the most, below the surface. 
It has been recorded from the Algerian Sahara close to the frontier of Morocco, and 
as Rohlfs and Stecker obtained it on their way to the oasis of Kufra, to the south of 
Tripoli, and Bruce in the Atbara valley, it may be said to be distributed over the 
Sahara. It may possibly extend with the sand-drifts to the east of the Isthmus of 
Suez, but that it occurs in Syria proper seems very improbable, considering its habits. 
It has not yet been observed in Arabia, in which five out of the seven members of the 
genus occur. The remaining species, S. arenarius, which is the most closely allied of 
all to S. officinalis, is found in Sind, whereas S. hemprichii inhabits the opposite coast 
of the Straits of Bab-el- Mandeb. 
