350 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE INTESTINAL PROTOZOA OF 
THREE EGYPTIAN LIZARDS, WITH A NOTE ON A 
CELL-INVADING FUNGUS. 
By C. M. WENYON, 
Director of Research in the Tropics to the Wellcome Bureau of 
Scientific Research. 
(With Plates XIX and XX, and 2 Text-figs.) 
While I was in Egypt conducting investigations into the etiology of dysentery 
with Captain F. W. O’Connor at Alexandria in 1916 I was able to make some 
observations on the intestinal protozoa of three species of lizard. The occur¬ 
rence of an Entamoeba and a Chilomastix (Tetramitus) in one of these, 
Agama stellio, was mentioned in our publication on the Human Intestinal 
Protozoa in the Near East , p. 147 (1917). The other lizards investigated were 
Chamaeleon vulgaris and Lacerta agilis. I will describe the observations on 
the protozoa under their respective hosts. 
1. Chamaeleon vulgaris. 
The only protozoon found in the gut of the chamaeleon was a flagellate 
of the leptomonas type and it was confined almost entirely to the cloaca, 
though sometimes it extended in small numbers into the rectum. The only 
previous record of such a flagellate in the cloaca of the chamaeleon is in a 
paper by Bayon (1915), who discovered it in Chamaeleon pumilus in Robben 
Island in 1914. I had the opportunity of examining Dr Bayon's preparations 
and there can be no doubt that the measurements he quotes are erroneous. 
The length of the flagellate bodies is given as 25-75^,; breadth 2-10 g ; diameter 
of trophonucleus 2-5-4/x. In none of his preparations did I see flagellates of 
this size, nor have I found them in the parasite of the Egyptian Chamaeleon 
vulgaris. Evidently some mistake in calculation was made and the measure¬ 
ments are at least three times what they should be. 
Structure of the flagellate. 
The organism (PI. XX, Fig. 1) as it occurs in the Egyptian lizard has the 
usual leptomonas structure—an elongate, flattened and pointed body, a central 
nucleus and a terminal and anterior kinetoplast with a long flagellum directed 
forwards, in which direction the flagellate progresses. The kinetoplast, which 
in many individuals is laterally placed (Fig. 1, o), as in other organisms of this 
