THE GECKO. 
261 
inhabitants of the East Indies say that the best 
remedy against this poison is the curcumie root. 
Such a Gekko had got within the body of the wall of 
the church in the Receif, which obliged us to have a 
great hole made in the said wall to dislodge it from 
thence.” * 
After rain,, the Gecko quits its retreat; its walk 
is not very quick ; it catches ants and worms. The 
eggs of this creature are oval,, and commonly as large 
as a hazel-nut. The female covers them carefully 
with a slight shelter of earth, and the heat of the sun 
hatches them. The Jesuit mathematicians sent into 
the East Indies by Louis the Fourteenth have de- 
scribed a lizard in the kingdom of Siam, named Tokaie, 
which is evidently the same as the Gecko. That which 
they examined exceeded one foot in length to the end 
of the tail. The name Tokaie, like that of Gecko, is 
an imitation of sounds made by the creature. 
Hasselquist writes thus concerning the Gecko. “ It 
is very common at Cairo, as well in the houses as 
without. The venom of this animal has a singularity, 
in that it issues from the balls of its toes. It seeks 
all places and things where salt has been employed ; 
and where it has walked over them, this dangerous 
venom marks the track. In the month of July 1750, 
Panwell — a low, swampy station, a few miles from the presi- 
dency — upon rising in the morning I discovered a black spot 
upon my forehead, the size of a sixpence. It appeared exactly as 
if the skin had been seared, and was rather tender, though not 
so much so as to cause me any inconvenience. It continued for 
nearly a month, during which period a new skin formed over the 
spot. What had produced it I never could ascertain. 
* See Churchill’s voyages, vol. ii. p. 12. 
