THE LIZARDS 121 



The present species is also very abundant in Ceylon, 

 where it seems to grow larger than on the continent, 

 reaching a length of sixteen inches ; of this measurement 

 the tail takes up about eleven inches. The "Blood- 

 sucker" lives principalljr in trees or on fallen trunks. 

 The female lays about a dozen oval, soft-shelled eggs, 

 burying them in the soft debris of a rotten log or in 

 mould. Fully two months elapse before the young liz- 

 ards emerge; at the time of deposit the eggs are about 

 half an inch long. 



To the popular student it would be monotonous and 

 wearing on interest to describe group after group of 

 the Agamidce^ still it is hard to pass many of them by, 

 as the writer recalls weird forms and strange habits 

 among the many examples he has had under observa- 

 tion. However, in this work the idea has been to pre- 

 sent a general resume of the reptile world, so we must 

 confine ourselves to representative species of large fam- 

 ilies. Looked at from a bird's-eye point of view, the 

 genera of the Agamidce, with the exception of Draco 

 and Moloch — both highly specialized — form fairly un- 

 broken chains toward the various extremes in develop- 

 ment, so we are unable to divide this family into groups. 

 The genus Calotes, just passed, stands as representative 

 of a large number of arboreal, insectivorous species be- 

 longing to a number of genera. Nearly all of these 

 species have an extremely long, slender tail, yet the 

 elongate appendage is not brittle as is the case with 

 the Iguanidce, Teiidce, Lacertida;, Scincidce, Anguidce 

 and other families. 



Further progress brings us to the genus Agama, 

 with over fortj^ species, found in southeastern Europe, 

 southern Asia and in Africa. None groAvs to a length 

 of much over a foot. The species have a decidedly 



