no 
LIZARDS. 
most acute is doubtless that of sight, next to which probably comes hearing. In 
regard to diet, a few lizards are strictly herbivorous, but the great majority are 
more or less completely carnivorous; the larger kinds feeding on small mammals, 
birds and their eggs, other reptiles, and, more rarely, frogs and fish, as well as 
many descriptions of invertebrates. The smaller members of the order, on the 
other hand, are restricted mainly or entirely to an invertebrate diet, the great 
portion of which consists of insects, worms, and land-molluscs. Nearly all drink 
by rapidly protruding and withdrawing the tongue; dew affording sufficient 
moisture to those living on rock or in trees, while some kinds can exist for long 
periods, or even entirely without drinking. The species inhabiting the warmer 
regions, save those which are arboreal or aquatic in their habits, pass the hottest 
and driest season of the year in a state of torpor; while those in colder regions 
regularly hibernate, such hibernation, in the case of some of the species inhabiting 
the continent of Europe, lasting for a period of from six to eight months. As 
regards their breeding-habits, the majority of lizards lay eggs, which may vary 
from two to thirty in number, and have generally a soft and leathery covering, 
although sometimes furnished with a hard calcareous shell. 
One peculiarity characterising the members of the order cannot be passed 
over before concluding these introductory remarks. This is the facility with 
which they are enabled to reproduce lost parts, and more especially the tail. As 
is well known, in many lizards, when handled, the tail breaks off without any 
rough usage, and in all or nearly all it will readily come in two if pulled when the 
creature is seeking to escape, this susceptibility to automatic fracture being due to 
a cartilaginous band across the middle of each vertebra of the tail in the case of 
the common lizard of England. Such missing portion of the tail is speedily 
reproduced, it may be double; and whereas among the members of the typical 
family of the order, the scaling of the reproduced portion is like the original, in 
certain other forms this is by no means always the case. The remarkable circum¬ 
stance about the matter is that when the pattern of the scaling of such a new tail 
differs from the original, it always reverts to that characterising a less specialised 
and probably ancestral group. It is scarcely necessary to mention that in such 
an extensive assemblage as the present, only a comparatively small percentage of 
species, or even genera, can be mentioned, and these but briefly. 
The Geckos. 
Family Geckonid^E. 
Few creatures have given rise to a greater amount of fable and legend than 
the large group of lizards commonly known as geckos; such legends being probably 
due to the nocturnal and domestic habits of these creatures, coupled with the sharp 
chirping cry from which they derive their name, and their curiously expanded 
disc-like toes. Absolutely innocuous, they have been credited from the earliest 
times with ejecting venom from their toes, and of poisoning whatever they crawled 
over; while the teeth of one species have been asserted to be capable of leaving 
their impression on steel. Indeed, so intense is the dread inspired by these little 
