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80 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
old world, which is provided with glands for seereting venom, or fangs through 
which to eject it.” You ask, with reference to this passage, if the time has come 
for saying that none of the Indian lizards are poisonous. If you refer to known 
species—that is, species which have been examined, described, and named by 
competent authority, your question may be confidently answered in the affirmative. 
My remark is, of course, limited to sueh species. He would be rash, indeed, who 
would deny the possibility of a venomous lizard being discovered in the old world. 
There are still tracts in the Himalayas, and elsewhere in Asia, of whieh the 
zoology has been very imperfectly, if at all, observed, and where the local bis- 
cobras, if not bis-cobras, may at least turn out to be “‘boojums.” Nothing that I 
have‘said is in any way inconsistent with the admission that another “horrid” 
heloderm may be found in India, slight though the chanee of such discovery 
may be. The assertion that there is no known species of venomous lizard in the 
old world is, I need hardly say, not made as a hasty deduction from personal 
observation. It expresses, as far as I can ascertain, the conclusion of all the 
leading authorities on the subject. This conclusion is obviously strengthened by 
the fact—to whieh I drew prominent attention in my paper—that. all the 
specimens of lizards commonly produced as bis-cobras belong to species already 
well-known to be innocuous. 
You are quite right, however, in stating that the Statistical Abstract shows 
that in 1884 and 1885 four to seven persons, respectively, were killed by lizards. 
I might add that in each of the preceding years, 1882 and 1888, one person is said 
to have died from a similar cause. Most of these casualties occurred, I believe, 
in Guzerat. I have a dim recollection of having myself, while in Broach, examined 
an inquest report declaring a man or a woman to have been killed by a chandengo 
(the local name of the two harmless species of monitor lizards, Varanus dracena 
and Psammosaurus scincus). 
Some irresponsible critics affect to believe that the annual official returns as to 
deaths caused by wild animals and snakes are not worth the paper they are printed 
on; that all sorts of murders and dark deeds are covered conveniently and safely 
by the mortality for which snakes and “ other animals ” are officially held respon- 
sible ; and that “snake poison ”’ is merely a happy and conventional way of alluding 
to the ‘cup of cold poison’? which terminates domestic disputes, and gets rid of 
people who make themselves disagreeable. My faith in the accuracy of the 
returns has never been materially weakened by these and similar reckless insinn- 
ations. I will therefore admit, for the sake of argument, that these alleged 
victims were really bitten by lizards, and died after being so bitten. I prefer to 
meet whatever evidence the returns may give against me boldly and on its merits, 
and scorn to shelter myself behind the plea that a man, declared by a village 
punchayat to have been killed by a lizard, may have had a dose of arsenic. 
But I reject the inference which the believers in the bis-cobra will naturally 
draw from these reported deaths, Admitting that death in each of these cases 
followed the bite of a lizard, it by no means follows that death was due to the action 
of any poison. Those who, like myself, refuse to believe, on the evidence before 
us, that there are any venomous lizards in this country, will say that the direct 
and immediate cause of death in these cases was fright, and fright only aided 
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