The inflated extremity of the tongue is highly glutinous.
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.
THE TUATERA OF NEW ZEALAND.
Belongs to an ancient reptile race of which it is the only living survivor.
The majority of the chamæleons lay eggs, but a small number produce living young, as with skinks and other lizards. Examples of the common European and North African species kept by the writer excavated holes in the earth, in which they laid their eggs, and then carefully covered them up again. Unfortunately these eggs were not fertilised. One South African species has been reported to the writer as being in the habit of placing and separately wrapping and fastening up each egg as deposited in the leaves of the tree in which it resided. While Africa and Madagascar represent the head centres of distribution of the fifty odd known species of chamæleons, they enter Europe through the Spanish Peninsula, and extend eastward to Arabia, India, and Ceylon. The largest known variety, which inhabits Madagascar, attains a length of 15 inches; the smallest pygmy chamæleon of the Cape scarcely measures 2½ inches.
The Tuatera.
That singular reptile found on certain small islands lying to the north-east of New Zealand, and known as the Tuatera, differs in so many structural characters from all other lizards that it is assigned to a separate order. Externally the tuatera does not differ materially in form from an ordinary lizard. The skin, however, is peculiar for its leathery, granulated, and wrinkled texture; there is no trace of external ears; the eyes, adapted for nocturnal vision, have in daylight vertical pupils; and the bases of the toes are united by connecting webs. The deeper internal characteristics include the possession of supplementary so-called abdominal ribs, the presence of which are readily apprehended on handling the living animal. These structures, while absent in ordinary lizards, find their near equivalent in the breastplate of tortoises and turtles. The teeth are not implanted in distinct sockets, but attached to the summits of the jaws, which are developed in a beak-like manner, and in older individuals fulfil, after the manner of a beak, the functions of the worn-out incisor teeth.
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.