96 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
the poor victims, if not otherwise accessible, are starved into surrender. Birds and 
their eggs, insects, and even lizards of smaller size are all equally acceptable as food 
to these giants of their race. 
Examples of the Lace Lizard are usually on view in the Reptile House at the 
Regent’s Park, including, at the present time, specimens that measure as much as four 
or five feet in total length. In none of these imported individuals, however, do the 
bright blue and yellow tints that decorate the throat exhibit the vividness charac- 
teristic of specimens fresh from their native “bush.” The individual possessed by the 
author being of too erratic a disposition to be trusted to sit for his portrait in the 
open, the best had to be made of the opportunities afforded of photographing him 
through the wire netting of his cage. The most satisfactory of these attempts, 
reproduced in Plate XIV., suffices, notwithstanding the intervening wirework, to 
impart a very fair idea of its most characteristic attitude, the natural involute 
coiling of the tail exhibited by the creature when in complete repose being especially 
noteworthy. Their tail constitutes with the Monitors a very formidable weapon. It 
is frequently longer than the body compressed from side to side, and as tough as 
leather. Independently of its armature of teeth and claws, the animal can by virtue 
of this appendage transform itself into a sort of animated stockwhip and severely 
punish incautious aggressors at close quarters. An attendant at the Zoological 
Gardens was assailed in this manner and had his neck severely lacerated by the tail 
of one of these reptiles while cleaning out its den, a short while since. Varani 
skins are, it may be mentioned, extensively utilised nowadays for the manufacture of 
purses and other “fancy leather” or “Lizard Skin” articles. 
There is a species of Monitor, Varanus giganteus, allied to the arboreal 
variety, V. varius, that is accredited with attaining to even larger proportions, a length 
of as much as eight feet having been recorded of specimens from the northern 
territory of South Australia. The habits of this species are, however, very distinctly 
amphibious. on which account it was originally referred by Gray to the genus 
Hydrosaurus. Varanus, or Hydrosaurus salvator, is another huge Monitor possessing 
similar amphibious habits and attaining to like dimensions, which, in addition to 
inhabiting Queensland, is met with in India and throughout the Malay Archipelago. 
A remarkably fine example of this Monitor, shot by Lieutenant Stanley Flower 
at Singapore, has been recently presented by him to, and has heen admirably set up 
in, the Zoological Galleries of the British, Natural History, Museum. Excepting to 
those who may take delight in the society of full-grown crocodiles and alligators, the 
