CoLENSO. — On a supjjosed new Species of Naultinus. 253 



offensive, yet still living (thougli not eating), dirtying the others with its 

 discharges, anal now as well as aural, I threw it out into the field. 



On the 16th November I looked at my lizards, as usual, in the morning 

 before going to town, and found them right ; but on my return, at one 

 o'clock, p.m., the biggest spotted one (which I believe to be a male) had cast its 

 skin ! — or epidermis ! — it was nearly all got off, and almost entire. I helped 

 it, by holding its scurf, to draw out its tail. I was much pleased at this 

 for several reasons — some I may here mention : (1.) The beautiful new 

 sparkling vivid green colour of the animal! now, for the first time seen in its 

 living beauty. (2.) The cast-skin, or scurf, truly a curious object ; showing, 

 not only every scale, and joint, and spot, and marking, including the little 

 fingers of its tiny gloves close down to its claws ; but, also, the very outer 

 skin or film of its labial scales, and of its eyes. (3.) The cast skin was not 

 at all coloiu"ed green like the animal, but was merely of a light grey colour 

 with lighter patches corresponding with its large white spots. (4.) It had 

 commenced breaking away under the chin, and so peeled off from its snout 

 regularly down its back and body to the tip of its tail. (5.) I might now 

 expect to know something certain of this animal's economy (and of its con- 

 geners), as to how often in the jenr it would cast its skin. 



One of the spotted young ones (which I shall term No. 1.) also cast its 

 skin on the 6th December ; like that of the large male it commenced at the 

 snout, but it came away in fragments — perhaps owing to its being both 

 young and tender. 



On the 8th December the second young green lizard died, just as the 

 former young one died, from starvation. This one had, in common with 

 the two young spotted ones, plenty of small flies (now more easily obtained 

 as the summer advanced) , but it wanted the power to catch any. 



About the 12th December the two remainmg adult lizards seemed to be 

 getting into a diseased state ; the handsome male, which had so lately shed 

 its outer skin, had something the matter with its ear, from which a bloody 

 discharge was oozing (resembling in a smaller degree the early diseased 

 state of the adult one that died), while the adult female was restless, swelled 

 in the lower abdomen, and discharging a bloody mixture from its anus ; 

 finding this one getting rapidly worse, with its anus greatly swelled and 

 blotchy — starred all round the margin as it were in a curious regular man- 

 ner — I lost no tnne in putting it into a bottle of spirits, and, on my going 

 to look at it some ten minutes after, I found, to my astonishment, no less 

 than 26 large hving larvae of that red-brown flesh-fly had been discharged 

 from its anus ! These were each 5 Unes long, and it was their posterior 

 ends compacted together and jutting out from the lizard's anus which had 

 given it in that part its peculiar appearance. Now it flashed across my 



