. Sketches of the natural history of Ceylon : with narratives and anecdotes illustrative of the habits and instincts of the mammalia, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. : including a monograph of the elephant and a description of the modes of capturing and training it with engravings from original drawings . red in the-Dekkan or Hindustan, Blood-suckers.—The lizards already mentioned, how-ever, are but the strangers introduction to innumerablevarieties of others, all most attractive in their suddenmovements, and some unsurpassed in the brilliancy oftheir colouring, which bask on banks, dart
. Sketches of the natural history of Ceylon : with narratives and anecdotes illustrative of the habits and instincts of the mammalia, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. : including a monograph of the elephant and a description of the modes of capturing and training it with engravings from original drawings . red in the-Dekkan or Hindustan, Blood-suckers.—The lizards already mentioned, how-ever, are but the strangers introduction to innumerablevarieties of others, all most attractive in their suddenmovements, and some unsurpassed in the brilliancy oftheir colouring, which bask on banks, dart over rocks,and peer curiously out of the chinks of every ruined all their motions there is that vivid and brief energy,the rapid but restrained action associated with their • In coiToboration of the view eluding, not only indiyidual species, propounded elsewhere (see pp. 7, but whole genera pecidiar to the 84, «fce.), and opposed to the island, and not to be found on the popular belief that Ceylon, at some mainland. See a paper by Dr. A. remote period, was detached from Gunthee on The Geog. Distribution the continent of India by the in- of Eeptilcs, Magaz, Nat. Hist, for terposition of the sea, a list of March, 1859, p. will be found at p. 319, in- T 2 276 REPTILES. [Chap. 5^ limited poAver ofrespiration^ whichjustifies the ac-curate picture of— The green lizard, rustling thro the grass,And up the fluted shaft, with short, quick, spiringTo vanish in the^ chinks which time has made. The most beautiful of therace is the green ccdotes^, inlength about twelve inches,which, with the exception ofa few dark streaks about thehead, is as brilliant as thepurest emerald or its congeners of thesame family, it never altersthis dazzling hue; whilstmany of them possess, but Rogers Pcestum.^ Calotes sp. CALOTES OPHTOMACHOS Chap. IX.] CALOTES VEESICOLOE, ETC. 277 in a less degree, the power, like the chameleon, ofexchanging their ordinary colou
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookde, booksubjectelephants, booksubjectzoology
