50 J. Cockb'jrn — On the habits of a little known Lizard, [No. 2, 



VIII. — On the habits of a little Tcnown Lizard, Brachysaura ornata. — By 



John Cockburn, 2nd Assistant to Superintendent Indian Museum, 



[Received 26th January; Eead 1st February.] 



BRACHYSAURA ORNATA. 



Blyth, J. A. S. B. Vol. XXV p. 44^8. 



Giinther, Reptiles of Brit. India, p. 161. 



Jerdon, P. A. S. B. 1870, p. 78. 



Stoliczka, P. A. S. B. 1872, p. 77. 



Very little is known of this lizard. It was originally described by 

 Blyth in the J. A. S. B. Vol. XXV from specimens procured by Dr. Jerdon 

 at Saugar in Central India Dr. Giinther includes it in an appendix to the 

 Reptiles of British India, and remarks that it is just possible that this 

 animal may be recognized when re-discovered, but from the description 

 alone it is impossible to characterize the new genus Brachysaura or to fix its 

 position in the family of the Agamidcs. 



In the P. A. S. B. for 1877, Dr. Jerdon in his Notes on Indian Herpe- 

 tology remarks that all his endeavours to procure specimens for a more 

 minute examination of this curious form had hitherto failed and " till some 

 one with sufficient scientific proclivities examines these districts we must 

 rest satisfied with our incomplete information." The type appears at this 

 time to have been lost. In 1872, five sjoecimens were procured in Kachh by 

 that enthusiastie naturalist Dr. Stoliczka, and described in the Proceedings 

 for May, 1872. 



During the last rainy season I found B. ornata excessively common in 

 the vicinity of the town of Banda and was enabled to send more than twenty 

 living specimens to the Zoological Gardens, Calcutta, as well as to present 

 a series to the Indian Museum. The results of my observations show how 

 much of interest there may be in the life history of a small lizard. 



There are certain anomalous sexual characters about this lizard, the 

 females being larger than the males. The superiority of the female in size 

 appears to occur irregularly throughout the province Sauropsida. The 

 female of Sltatia minor is a third larger than the male, but in Calotes 

 versicolor the reverse is the case. In Brachysaura, which is closely allied 

 to Calotes, not only is the female larger, but she is normally more brilliantly 

 coloured than the male. Certain peculiarities in the behaviour of the 

 females leads me to suspect that they seek and attract the males. In more 

 than one instance I observed a female make decided advances towards 

 a male. She sidled up to him in a most insinuating way, with a crouching 

 wriggling motion and open jaws, and seized him by the nuchal crest. 



Dr. Stoliczka P. A. S. B. 1872, p. 72 remarks that the head-quarters 

 of Brachysaura appear to be westward. This is not strictly correct, but 

 even in ignorance of Stoliczka's paper 1 fell into a similar mistake and in a 



