418 Proceedings of the 



of the other lizard tribes, although it is not to them usually 

 that venomous properties have been most frequently attri- 

 buted. It is mostly to the geckos among the lizards, or the 

 salamanders among the Amphibia, that such properties have 

 been ascribed ; possibly originating in the repulsive appear- 

 ance which they bear, and both having much less affinity with 

 the snakes than the Scincidce, to which the Sepsidce are nearly 

 allied, which are almost snakes, the feet being reduced to the 

 smallest rudiments ; still the passage leading not to the veno- 

 mous snakes, but to the innocuous species. 



On examination, however, I soon found all such specula- 

 tions to be premature and unnecessary. The lizard is as 

 thoroughly innocuous as any earth-worm. Its teeth are all 

 small, blunted, and cylindrical, quite regular, and fixed all 

 round and confined to the jaws (there being no palatal 

 teeth) ; and no fang, or any approach to a fang ; and no 

 tube, or appearance of duct, in any of them. A gland secret- 

 ing poison was scarcely to be expected in such circumstances, 

 but was carefully searched for, and found wanting. On ex- 

 amining the stomach, I found it pretty well filled with grass- 

 hoppers, crickets, and annellides. The remainder of its ana- 

 tomy offered nothing of particular interest or peculiarity. It 

 is therefore unnecessary to enter into details upon it. 



When I first examined it, it appeared to me to form a new 

 genus, allied to Dr Gray's genus Tiliqua, or the American 

 tribe Dip loglossus ; but I was induced to separate it from it 

 on account of its wanting palatal teeth, the possession of which 

 Dr Gray gives as one of the characters of the section in which 

 he places Tiliqua, and I accordingly named it Matricida 

 lug ens, from the native tale which I have narrated, and dis- 

 tributed it under that name. On communicating it, however, 

 to Dr Gray, he informs me that it is the same animal which 

 he described in the catalogue of specimens of lizards in the 

 British Museum, 1845, under the name of Tiliqua Fernandi, 

 and that the absence of palatine teeth in this species is not a 

 character on which much confidence is to be placed ; and he 

 mentions that he knows some true Tiliqua which have no 

 palatine teeth, ami others which have them when young, but 

 not when adult. 



