[495] Reaum ii. 457.
[496] The insect here alluded to is figured by Olivier under the name of Tenebrio nitens (No. 57. t. i. f. 4.): his Helops æneus (No. 58. t. i. f. 7.) is a different insect.
[497] Microgr. 170.
[498] iv. 259.
[499] Physico-Theol. Ed. 13. 363, note b.
[500] Nat. Hist. ii. 274.
[501] Amœn. Acad. i. 549. The Gecko, probably, is not the only lizard that walks against gravity. St. Pierre mentions one not longer than a finger, that, in the Isle of France, climbs along the walls, and even up the glass after the flies and other insects, for which it watches with great patience. These lizards are sometimes so tame that they will feed out of the hand.—Voyage, &c. 73. Major Moor and Captain Green observed similar lizards in India, that ran up the walls and over the ceilings after the mosquitos. Hasselquist says that the Gecko is very frequent at Cairo, both in the houses and without them, and that it exhales a very deleterious poison from the lobuli between the toes. He saw two women and a girl at the point of death, merely from eating a cheese on which it had dropped its venom. One ran over the hand of a man, who endeavoured to catch it; and immediately little pustules, resembling those occasioned by the stinging-nettle, rose all over the parts the creature had touched.—Voyage, 220. M. Savigny, however, who examined this animal in Egypt, assures me that this account of Hasselquist's, as far as it relates to the venom of the Gecko, is not correct.
[502] Philos. Trans. 1816. 325. t. xviii. f. 1-7.
[503] Ibid. f. 8-11.
[504] Kirby in Linn. Trans. xi. 106. t. viii. f. 13. a.