RÖNTGEN RAY PHOTOGRAPH OF OCELLATED LIZARD.
The remarkable length and slenderness of the bones of the hind feet are well illustrated by this photograph.
One of the most bizarre members of the Skink Family hails from Australia, where it is known as the Stump-tailed Lizard. The most remarkable feature in this form is the shortness and roundness of the caudal appendage, the contour and proportions of which, in fact, so nearly correspond with those of the head that it was originally described by its discoverer, Captain William Dampier, just over three centuries ago, as a double-headed animal. To quote his own quaint description: "The land animals we saw here [Sharks' Bay] included a sort of guanos of the same shape and size with other guanos, but differing from them in three remarkable particulars, for these had a larger and uglier head, and had no tail, and at the rump, instead of a tail there, they had a stump of a tail which appeared like another head, but not really, such being without mouth or eyes; yet this creature seemed by this means to have a head at each end."
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S., Milford-on-Sea.
COMMON SKINK.
Lives and burrows in the sand, coming out when the sun shines.
A specimen of the stump-tailed lizard is usually on view at the Regent's Park Gardens, and will afford visitors an opportunity for its comparison in the flesh with Dampier's description. Fine specimens of the stump-tail will measure as much as 10 inches in length, and are thick in proportion, the legs, however, being very small and weak. The surface of the back is covered with large, overlapping scales, that, in conjunction with its customarily dark brown or blackish hue, convey to it a marked resemblance to a long, imbricated fir-cone. On the under-surface the scales are in comparison very small; the colouring in this region is also usually light grey or yellow, variegated with darker reticulations.
Stump-tails make most good-natured and grotesque household pets. Of two examples which were for some years in the writer's possession a characteristic photograph is reproduced below. When basking in the sun, the tail often becomes distended to enormous proportions. The internal substance of this abnormally dilated organ consists chiefly of fatty tissue, and it seems probable that it fulfils the rôle of a reservoir for the storage of nutrient and heating materials, to be drawn upon during hibernation. The winter months in the southern districts of Western Australia are cold, and this lizard, in common with other local species, retires during that season into the sheltering recess of a hollow tree-stump or rock-crevice until the sun is again in the ascendant. The stump-tail is practically omnivorous in its habits. In captivity fruit, and more especially bananas, constitute a favourite diet, but it will also greedily devour worms, beetles, and garden-snails, and may consequently be turned to good account as a destroyer of garden-pests.
