Page:Natural History, Reptiles.djvu/100

92 may commonly be seen, day after day, at the same spot, frequently peeping out of a crevice, and remaining perfectly still for hours. They move with excessive deliberation, but are easily alarmed, when they dart into their hole with inconceivable rapidity. They may often be observed crawling on the vertical side of a beam, but we have never seen one actually inverted.

The food of this species principally consists of insects; but we have frequently found in its stomach substances of a vegetable nature also, as pulpy berries, and seeds of various kinds. Its eggs, which are about half-an-inch in length, irregularly oval and flattened, are laid in any crevice; they are covered with a hard and brittle calcareous shell. The young, when excluded, are exactly like the adult, but have the hues much more brilliant: they are able to run with agility the moment they leave the shell.

The sombre and lurid appearance of this Lizard, its stealthy motions, its nocturnal activity, and singular harsh cry, and especially a certain sinister aspect, produced by its large globular eye, unprotected by an eyelid, and divided by its linear pupil, have doubtless combined to give to it in the popular mind a character for evil, which its fellows in other regions possess, but to which it seems to have no rightful claim; for though dreaded, and vulgarly reputed poisonous, we have every reason to believe that it is a perfectly innocuous reptile.