56 LIZARDS. 



J. A. Houlder, met with some examples of the larger species 

 oil a journey to the north-east coast in 1876. One of these 

 which he shot is called alcdma, and although about nine feet 

 long, and as thick round the middle as the calf of a man's 

 leg, he calls a medium-sized specimen. " On each side of its 

 body was a long, yellow, black, and reddish chain on a 

 brownish ground, and near the extremity of the tail were 

 two abortive claws like the anal hooks of the boa." Some of 

 these serpents are brilliantly green in colour, this being 

 doubtless a protective resemblance to the surrounding 

 vegetation. This akdma "is nocturnal in its habits, and 

 appears to be more often on the ground and in the water 

 than in the trees." Another serpent, which seems un- 

 doubtedly a species of boa, is described as living in the 

 Sakalava country. " Hanging from the branches of trees, 

 it pounces suddenly on its victim, and, enveloping it in its 

 folds, speedily squeezes it to death. It is even said to kill 

 oxen and occasionally man. Some of the natives say that it 

 strikes with a spur in its tail, then sucks the blood which 

 flows from the wound thus made." 



The Lizards are no less remarkable than the snakes from 

 their Oriental and American, and, in some cases, Australian 

 relationships. But, as in the case of the Ophidia, the species 

 of Lacertidse found in the interior of Madagascar are all 

 small ; they are delicately striped and spotted, and are most 

 rapid in their movements. Several species of beautifully- 

 marked chameleons are found in the open country of the 

 interior, and others, larger, and of bright-green and golden 

 tints, in the upper forest of the eastern side of the island. 

 In passing through the woods a clay or two after a destructive 

 cyclone in February 1876, which had prostrated thousands 

 of great trees, we found a number of new forms of lizards, 

 chameleons, and tree-frogs among the upper branches of those 

 which had fallen across the paths. Had a naturalist been 

 then in the interior, he would have found a harvest of arbo- 

 real reptiles usually inaccessible from living at a height above 

 the ground ; while a botanist would have had an unusually 

 good opportunity of examining flowers and fruits which are 

 generally elevated one hundred feet or more overhead, in the 



