It is most probable that the word chomet includes, among other Lizards, many of the smaller Skinks which inhabit Palestine. Among them we may take as an example the Common Skink (Scincus officinalis), a reptile which derives its specific name from the fact that it was formerly used in medicine, together with mummy, and the other disgusting ingredients which formed the greater part of the old Pharmacopœia.
Even at the present day, it is used for similar purposes in the East, and is in consequence captured for the use of physicians, the body being simply dried in the sun, and then sent to market for sale. It is principally employed for the cure of sunstroke, nettle-rash, sand-blindness, or fever, and both patient and physician have the greatest confidence in its powers. It is said by some European physicians that the flesh of the Skink really does possess medicinal powers, and that it has fallen into disrepute chiefly because those powers have been exaggerated. In former days, the head and feet were thought to possess the greatest efficacy, and were valued accordingly.
Like all its tribe, the Skink loves sandy localities, the soil exactly suiting its peculiar habits. Although tolerably active, it does not run so fast or so far as many other Lizards, and, when alarmed, it has a peculiar faculty for sinking itself almost instantaneously under the sand, much after the fashion of the shore-crabs of our own country. Indeed, it is even more expeditious than the crab, which occupies some little time in burrowing under the wet and yielding sand, whereas the Skink slips beneath the dry and comparatively hard sand with such rapidity that it seems rather to be diving into a nearly excavated burrow than to be scooping a hollow for itself.
The sand is therefore a place of safety to the Skink, which does not, like the crab, content itself with merely burying its body just below the surface, but continues to burrow, sinking itself in a few seconds to the depth of nearly a yard.
The length of the Skink is about eight inches, and its very variable colour is generally yellowish brown, crossed with several dark bands. Several specimens, however, are spotted instead of banded with brown, while some are banded with white, and others are spotted with white. In all, however, the under-surface is silver grey.
It has been thought by several zoologists, that several of the Lizards belonging to the Seps family may be included in the general term of Chomet.
This theory is strengthened by the fact that those of the Sepsidæ which have no visible feet, and which, after the custom of such Lizards, burrow in the sand, are even at the present day eaten by Arabs, under the convenient title of Sand-fishes.
Several species of the Sepsidæ inhabit Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, and of these we will take two as examples.
The first is the Common Seps or Cicigna (Seps tridactylis), a nearly legless Lizard, having a very long and snake-like body, and four legs, so small and feeble as to be of scarcely any use in locomotion.