. Cassell's natural history. Animals; Animal behavior. TEE GECKOS. 287 body; its head is very short, rounded in front, square, and about as broad as high : the neck is short and the tail is short and jiointed. It is not as prickly as the Moloch, but there are eight sharp radi- ating spines on the back of the head, and rows of scales keeled and spined on the flanks. The liead is of a red-brown colour, yellowish beneath, spotted with brown, more or less, and the upper part of the body hi of i Til, IS a lai-i- â aeh side of the throat,. and the back is spotted with the same colour, and the spines
. Cassell's natural history. Animals; Animal behavior. TEE GECKOS. 287 body; its head is very short, rounded in front, square, and about as broad as high : the neck is short and the tail is short and jiointed. It is not as prickly as the Moloch, but there are eight sharp radi- ating spines on the back of the head, and rows of scales keeled and spined on the flanks. The liead is of a red-brown colour, yellowish beneath, spotted with brown, more or less, and the upper part of the body hi of i Til, IS a lai-i- â aeh side of the throat,. and the back is spotted with the same colour, and the spines are brownish. The length of this very ugly reptile is under six inches. It appears to live on insects, and to inhabit the hill country of Central Mexico. Another kind, of which a specimen was in the Zoological Gardens, is the Horned Lizard,* which conies from Texas. THE GECKO FAMILY.âTHE ASCALABOTES, OR Curiously-shaped thick-bodied Lizards, with clawed, flattened-out toes, running iip straight walls and hunting spiders inside houses, were common objects of natural history to the Greeks, and Aristophanes, and Theophrastus called them d<rKa\oj3tuT7)s, a name perjietuated by Aristotle. They are in- teresting on account of their very world-wide distribution, for they are found in the hottest parts of the Americas, of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania, and in several of the larger islands, and this diffusion, insular and continental, together with the amphicoelian nature of the bodies cf their vertebr»,t indicates the antiquity of the group. Species of one genus of the family may be seen in the South of Fiance, and in most Mediterranean countries, and a common kind, which scampers up and down walls, runs along the ceiling, and holds on and turns where the surface is often slippery and upright, belongs to the. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and app
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjecta, booksubjectanimals
