Cn. XI.] THE CHIOK-CHACK. 169 



dozen overhead while I have been at dinner in a good-sized 

 room, some as long as my hand, and usually pale-coloured. 

 They vary, however, somewhat in colom", according to food 

 and locality. I have been informed by credible friends of 

 instances in which they would habitually come down upon 

 the table and take food offered to them, and it is equally 

 certain that they occasionally come down involuntarily, losing 

 their precarious footing overhead while in chase of an insect, 

 in which case they fall with a thump upon the floor or table,* 

 an accident which usually results in the loss of their tails, 

 which break off with the shock or the fright ; and it is by no 

 means unusual to see them with their short stumpy caudal 

 appendages in process of reproduction. Such an occm-rence 

 happening in the night I have found rather startling. If a 

 moth or a butterfly flutters about near the ceiling, the chick- 

 chacks are aU upon the alert, running at it as it passes near 

 them ; and although the reptile may succeed in catching it, 

 the insect is often too unwieldy for them, and they have 

 considerable difficulty in securing it. They clear the house 

 of mosquitoes and flies, however, and are never molested, 

 but, on the other hand, always encouraged. A singular cir- 

 cumstance occurred to the colonial sm-geon, who related it 

 to me : he was lying awake in bed when a chick-chack fell 

 from the ceiling upon the top of. his mosquito-curtain; at 

 the moment of touching it the . lizard became brilliantly 

 luminous, illuminating the objects in the neighbourhood, 

 much to the astonishment of the doctor, who had never 

 before witnessed such an occm'rence. 



Another lizard of a larger size than the last is the barking 

 lizard (probably Gecko verus), which lives in trees and also 



* A pretty little white-spotted lizard (Hemidactylus tiiedrus) fell on one 

 occasion upon my knees in this manner, while sitting in the verandah. 



