Cotenso.—On a supposed new Species of Naultinus. 257 
which they also did. The large lizard often puts its tongue out (“licking its 
lips") when it goes after a fly, especially if a big one; I am inelined to 
think that it is hungry then. It is pretty to see the two young lizards 
going together after the same fly, especially if the fly is crawling above 
them, within, on the glass roof; to see them walking slowly, side by side, 
with measured gait, and step by step, like a pair of hounds in a leash or a 
couple of miniature fairy-like little creatures, with their heads up, and their 
little black eyes glistening ; at such times, too, when they at last near the 
fly, they often trample on each other in their eagerness, but whenever they 
do so, they always take it very quietly, the one eel: neither struggling 
nor retaliating. 
It has often seemed to me as if it were a natural law, or rule, of these 
lizards (a thing understood by them), that whenever they trample on, or 
walk slowly over, each other, or stand, or lie, or even sleep on each other, 
the under one, or ones, always take it patiently, and rarely ever move at 
all—not even when the sharp claws of the upper lizard are pressing on the 
eyes of the one under him: I have often been surprised at this. I have 
never onee seen them fight or fall out, or attempt to bite eaeh other, 
although confined in so small a compass. They often spend hours lying on 
each other's backs, which is a favourite posture with them, and sometimes 
sleep, or spend, the whole night thus. I have seen the whole seven thus 
together in one lump, with, sometimes, the little ones underneath. 
They don't seem very timid nor easily startled to any great degree with 
noises, or sights, or sounds. I keep them on the table in my sitting-room, at 
which I take my meals, etc., and I have often thrown down a newspaper by 
their side, or struek the table with a book pretty strongly, yet they never 
start; it is the same when the candles are lit. They appear, too, as if they 
— liked to snugly ensconce themselves in their cage under the koromiko 
branch, or (the two young’ ones) stretched out at full length on the upper 
side of the twigs. 
I believe them to be inoffensive, peaceful, and sociable ; and if, as I have 
already surmised, the fourth one (whieh was killed) was also a male, then 
there would have been two couples, at least, hybernating together in one 
**hole;" or that ** hole" may have been their usual dwelling-place, seeing 
there were found in it “lots of black stuff "— no doubt their dry and har- 
dened fæces, which could not, I think, have been so largely deposited during 
the short period then passed of their hybernation. An intelligent friend in 
the eountry, who is also an observer of nature, has informed me that he 
has found them, in clearing, ‘six or seven together, euddled up under the 
roots of a flax-bush " (Phormium). 
It is pretty to see them drinking, which they do but seldom ; they lap 
water much like a cat, but very slowly, as if they were tasting it; every now 
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