SCINCUS OFFICINALIS. 207 
The members of the French Expedition did not meet with this species in Lower 
Egypt. No notice of it occurs in M. Is. Geoffroy's part of the work, and, in Audouin's 
section, only Daudin's description of it is quoted. Moreover, M. Is. Geoffroy himself, 
in a note to De Sacy's translation of Abd-AUatifs work, states that it is not found in 
Lower Egypt, and that it is rare in Upper Egypt. My experience has been quite the 
reverse. He adds, moreover, that it was brought to Cairo by the caravans from 
Abyssinia ; but the scink they carried was in all likelihood S. hemprichii and not 
S. officinalis, which does not occur in Ayssinia proper, whereas the former does. The 
similarity of the Arabian scinks to the true officinal scink of Egypt doubtless led the 
latter to be erroneously regarded as an inhabitant of that part of Asia. 
Bruce figures Scincus officinalis and states that it is a native of Atbara " beyond 
the rains," and that it seemed well known to the different black inhabitants who came 
from the westwards by the great caravan which, in his day, was called the caravan 
of the Sudan. The term el adda given by Bruce to this lizard I have never heard 
used in Egypt. On showing it to some Bedouins in my employment they called 
it sakankur, the name applied by some old Arab writers to their scink, which was 
one or other of the two Varani found in Lower Egypt, and I observe that Sir J. 
Gardner Wilkinson (unpublished drawings) also gives sakankoor as the Arab name 
of Scincus officinalis. De Sacy conjectures that the term iJie = idfia or adhayeli, 
the el adda of Bruce, was properly applicable to Chalcides ocellatus, Forskal, and he 
mentions that Damiri, quoted by Bochart, states positively that lizards so called bore 
in Egypt the name ^Is^ =sihliya, the native term correctly applied to it by Forskal. 
As already mentioned, Prospero Alpini pointed out that the scink of his day (1553- 
1617) was not the lizard known to the ancients as Scincus. Avicenna (980-1037) 
says that the saquanqur is a lizard found in the Nile, a statement repeated by Abd- 
Allatif and by some Arab authors. 
Avicenna gives two or more receipts for the preparation of an electuary of Scincus, 
which in Southeimer's translation is identified with Scincus officinalis. Preparations 
of the latter lizard are still in use in Africa and Asia, and, not many years ago, I saw 
some dried specimens of a Scincus that had been imported into India. The only 
treatment to which they had been subjected was evisceration and drying, doubtless in 
the sun. This lizard once held a place in the British Pharmacopoeia on account of 
its supposed alexipharmic properties, and it entered into the compound preparations 
known as " Theriaca Andromache " and " Confectio Damocratis." Pliny extolled its 
virtues as a specific for the wounds caused by poisoned arrows. Among the Arabs it 
was in high repute as a remedy for reanimating the powers exhausted by age or by 
debauchery, and in eastern countries fables are still extant regarding its potency in 
this respect. 
