There is no genus of quadrupeds that I have known in the east so very numerous as that of the lizard, or of which there are so many varieties. The eastern, or desert parts of Syria, bordering upon Arabia Deserta, which still have moisture sufficient, abound with them beyond a possibility of counting them. I am positive that I can say, without exaggeration, that the number I saw one day in the great court of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec amounted to many thousands; the ground, the walls and stones of the ruined buildings, were covered with them, and the various colours of which they consisted made a very extraordinary appearance, glittering under the sun, in which they lay sleeping, or basking. It was in vain, in a place so full of wonders as Baalbec, to think of spending time in designing lizards. I contented myself with collecting and preserving those I could catch entire, many of which have perished by the accidents of the journey, though some of very great beauty have escaped, and are in my collection in great preservation.

As I went eastward towards the desert, the number of this animal decreased, I suppose, from a scarcity of water; for example, at Palmyra, tho’ there were ruins of ancient buildings, and a great solitude, as at Baalbec, the lizards were few, all of the colour of the ground, without beauty or variety, and seemingly degenerated in point of size.

The Arabian naturalists and physicians were better acquainted with the different species of this animal than any philosophers have been since, and in all probability than any strangers will ever be; they lived among them, and had an opportunity of discovering their manners and every detail of their private oeconomy. Happy if succeeding the Greeks in these studies, they had not too frequently left observation to deviate into fable; the field, too, which these various species inhabit is a very extensive one, and comprehends all Asia and Africa, that is, great portion of the old world, every part of which is, from various causes, more inaccessible at this day, than after the Arabian conquest. It is from the Arabian books then that we are to study with attention the descriptions given of the animals of the country. But very great difficulties occur in the course of these disquisitions. The books that contain them are still extant, and all the animals likewise exist as before; but, unfortunately, the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Arabic, are languages very ambiguous and equivocal, and are in terms too loose and vague for modern accuracy and precise description, and especially so in that of colours; besides, that unbounded liberty of transposition of letters, and syllables of words, in which the writers of those languages have indulged themselves, from notions of elegance, seem to require, not only a very skilful and attentive, but also a judicious and sober-minded reader, that does not run away with whimsical, or first conceptions, but weighs the character of his author, the common idioms of language which he uses, and opportunities of information that he had concerning the subjects upon which he wrote, in preference to others that may have treated the same, but who differ from them in facts.

The small lizard here described is a native of Atbara beyond the rains, in that situation where we have said the island and city of MeroË formerly were. It seemed also to be well known by the different black inhabitants that came from the westward by the great caravan which crossed the desert north of the Niger, and is called the Caravan of Sudan, of which I have often spoken, as being the only barbarians who seem to pay the least attention to any articles of natural history. These bring to Cairo, and to Mecca, multitudes of green paroquets, monkeys, weasels, mice, lizards, and serpents, for the diversion and curiosity of the men of note in Arabia, or of the Beys and the women of the great at Cairo. This lizard is called El Adda, it burrows in the sand, and performs this operation so quickly, that it is out of sight in an instant, and appears rather to have found a hole, than to have made one, yet it comes out often in the heat of the day, and basks itself in the sun; and if not very much frightened, will take refuge behind stones, or in the withered, ragged roots of the absinthium, dried in the sun to nearly its own colour.

Almost the whole of this large tribe of lizards is, by the Arabians, described as poisonous. Experiment has detected the falsehood of this, in very many species; the same idea has led them to attribute to them medicinal virtues in the same proportion, and, I am apt to believe, with nearly as little reason; at least, though the books prescribing them are in everybody’s hands, the remedy is not now made use of in the places where those books were wrote; and this affords a strong proof that the medicine was never very efficacious.

The El Adda is one of the few which the Arabs in all times have believed to be free of poisonous qualities, and yet to have all the medicinal virtues that they have so abundantly lavished upon the more noxious species. It has been reputed to be a cure for that most terrible of all diseases, the Elephantiasis; yet this distemper is not, that I know, in the hotter parts of Africa, and certainly this lizard is not an inhabitant of the higher or colder parts of Abyssinia, which we may call exclusively the domicil of the elephantiasis. It is likewise thought to be efficacious in cleansing the skin of the body, or face, from cutaneous eruptions, of which the inhabitants of this part of Africa are much more afraid than they are of the plague; it is also used against films, and suffusions on the eyes. I never did try the effect of any of these, but give their history solely upon the authority of the Arabian authors.

I have drawn it here of its natural size, which is 6-1/6 inches. Though its legs are very long, it does not make use of them to stand upright, but creeps with its belly almost close to the ground. It runs, however, with very great velocity. It is very long from its shoulder to its nose, being nearly two inches. Its body is round, having scarce any flatness in its belly. Its tail too is perfectly round, having no flatness in its lower part. It is exceedingly sharp-pointed, and very easily broke, yet I have seen several where the part broke off has been renewed so as scarcely to be discernible. It is the same length, 2-1/6 inches, between the point of the tail and the joint of the hinder leg, as was between the nose and the shoulder of the foreleg. Its forehead from the occiput is flat, its shape conical, not pointed, but rounded at the end in the shape of some shovels or spades. The head is darker than the body, the occiput darker still; its face is covered with fine black lines, which cross one another at right angles like a net. Its eyes are small, defended with a number of strong black hairs for eye-lashes. Its upper jaw is longer, and projects considerably over the under; both its jaws have a number of short, fine, but very feeble teeth, and when holding it in my hand, though it struggled violently to get loose, it never attempted to make use of its teeth; indeed it seems to turn its neck with great difficulty. Its ears are large, open, and nearly round. Its body is a light-yellow, bordering on a straw-colour, crossed with eight bands of black, almost equally distant, except the two next the tail. All these decrease both in breadth and length from the middle towards each extremity of the animal. The scales are largest along the back, they are very close, though the divisions are sufficiently apparent. Their surface is very polished, and seems as if varnished over. Its legs from the shoulder to the middle toe are nearly an inch and three quarters long; its feet are composed of five toes, the extremity of each is armed with a brown claw of no great strength, whose end is tipt with black.

I have heard some of the common people call this lizard Dhab: This we are to look upon as an instance of ignorance in the vulgar, rather than the opinion of a naturalist well informed; for the Dhab is a species perfectly well known to be different from this, and is frequently met with in the deserts which surround Cairo.