64 
Annals of the Transvaal Museum, 
The genus Chamaeleon has its headquarters in Madagascar and Africa, 
and there are one or two isolated species in Arabia, Ceylon, and Southern 
India. The species melanocephalus , taeniobronchus , gutturalis, caffer, 
pumilus , ventralis , and damaranus form a distinct and characteristic South 
African group : they are mostly Cape Colony forms, several extending into 
Natal, whilst damaranus ranges between Knysna (Cape Colony) and the 
Zoutpansberg District. Mocquard has recorded C. melanocephalus from 
Madagascar, but in his recent work on the Madagascar reptiles (Nouv. 
Archiv. du Museum d’Hist. Nat., Paris, 1909) this species has no place in 
the faunistic list. 
The nearest relatives of this South African group of Cliamaeleons are 
C. tig vis of the Seychelles (and Zanzibar Islands ?), fuelleborni from 
German East Africa, jacksoni from Uganda, bitaeniatus of East Africa, and 
tempeli of German East Africa (Werner, Zool. Jahrb. 1902, p. 295). 
C. namaquensis is a western species stretching from South Angola 
into western Cape Colony, the most eastern record being Kimberley : this 
species is quite isolated in the genus. The species dilepis and quilensis , 
referred by Tornier to one and the same species, are tropical forms 
occurring in West Africa and German East Africa and extending south- 
wards as far as the Orange River. 
Rhampholeon marshalli , the only representative in South Africa of a 
tropical genus, comes from the Chirinda forest in south-east Mashonaland. 
Having thus briefly surveyed the distribution of the various groups of 
South African lizards, the following facts present themselves : — 
(1) One family, the Zonuridae, is almost peculiar to the region, but 
may have a representative in Madagascar, and another family, the 
Gerrhosauridae, has its headquarters in South Africa and Madagascar. 
(2) In the Geckonidae and the Scincidae there are a good proportion of 
genera which do not occur in tropical Africa, some of them being peculiar 
to South Africa, whilst others are represented also in Madagascar, and 
several in Southern India and Australia. 
(3) Several large and widely-distributed genera occurring also in 
tropical or northern Africa are represented in South Africa by an associa- 
tion of species which is structurally separated from the other sections of 
the same genus, but in other cases the South African representatives do 
not form a distinct group. 
(4) In some families (Agamidae, Yaranidae, Scincidae, etc.) a number of 
tropical species have extended southwards into South Africa. 
And we may refer the lizard fauna of South Africa to three classes : — 
(1) The peculiar endemic fauna, comprising the Zonuridae, Gerrhosau- 
ridae, all the Geckonidae with the exception of Hemidactylus, and the 
Scincidae, with the possible exception of Lygosoma and Ablepharus. 
(2) The Chamaeleons, which are very characteristic of the whole 
Ethiopian region, but unlike other families which are well developed in 
Madagascar, they are not restricted to southern Africa, but occur through- 
out the whole of Africa. 
(3) The “ Ethiopian ” fauna, including the Agamidae, Lacertidae, 
Yaranidae, Hemidactylus in the Geckonidae, the Amphisbaenidae, and 
possibly the Scincoid genera, Lygosoma, and Ablepharus. This fauna is 
composed of genera which for the most part have a wide range through 
Africa and often through Southern Europe and Asia, but this whole 
assembly may not be of single origin, 
