ANGLES. 
217 
of these, to which I have given the names of the 
Purple-tailed, and the Pearly-bellied Anoles*, are 
the commonest Reptiles in Jamaica, at least in St. 
Elizabeth’s and Westmoreland, the districts with 
which I am familiar. About the walls and rafters of 
out-buildings, the sides and summits of fence-walls, 
and similar places, they are continually running, re- 
minding one, as they dart about in their changeable 
beauty, of Moore’s description, — 
“ Gay Lizards glittering on the walls 
Of ruin’d shrines, busy and bright, 
As they were all alive with light.” 
They are particularly numerous in the lieusc^ which 
I have described these, with some other species of Jamaican 
Sauria, in the Annals and Mag. of N. H. for Nov. 1850, under the 
names of Anolis iodurus and A. opalinus. Though I feel assured 
that these are distinct species, it is diflScult to establish any unvarying 
mark of distinction. Colour, in creatures that are so variable, seems 
an unsatisfactory foundation for comparison or contrast ; yet, except 
the pale band that runs down the side of the latter, I can discover, 
even by minute examination under a lens, little of difference. In 
opalinus, the general form is more slender, the belly rather flatter, the 
head narrower and longer, and the muzzle more pointed. The tuber- 
cular plates on the head are less definitely shaped ; the large central 
superciliary plates are divided from the coronal ones by not more 
than one perfect row of small ones, where in iodurus two or three 
rows intervene. The scaling on the goitre is coarser in opalinus ; 
that is, the scales are larger and more pointed, and the naked inter- 
spaces wider. Most of these diversities are, it is true, minute, and 
even microscopic ; yet it is not difficult to distinguish the species 
when alive, at sight, even at a considerable distance. The scales of 
the inferior surface are iridescent in both, but chiefly in opalinus, the 
light from the belly of which, when the angle formed by the incident 
ray and the reflected ray is very wide, glows with a ruddy golden 
hue, exceedingly beautiful and opaline. 
L 
