OCR Text |
Show 1890.] HELODERMA SUSPECTUM. 151 Table (continued). Larger one. Smaller one. Greatest width on top of head .... 42 3'0 Between the eyes 2*7 2*1 Between the nostrils .... 1-2 0*7 From chin to commissure of gape . . 3*8 2*8 Middle toe, fore foot 2*0 1*5 Middle toe, hind foot P7 1-3 Vent to tip of tail 12-5 9'0 Mid-girth of tail 8*1 5-0 Chin to vent 28'8 20-2 From armpit to groin of same side . . 17'1 12#5 Width of vent PI 07 Coloration.-As I have elsewhere said, the two colours of Heloderma suspectum are black and some shade of yellow, orange, or salmon. No two specimens of this Lizard ever agree either in point of coloration or in the peculiar markings. Sometimes the black is intense and shiny ; sometimes dull and almost of a brownish tint. It always brings out the two tints brilliautly to wet the animal in water. As a rule the muzzle, chin and throat, cheeks, and fore part of the head on top are jet-black ; occasionally a iew yellow scales will be distributed over the throat, and in m y larger specimen there are over each eye two pale yellow tubercles. O n the top of the head an imperfect cross can generally be made out, the arms of which are composed of a single row of tubercles, broken at the intersection, and with its anterior extremities reaching as far forward on either side as the regions over the roofs of the orbits, while the posterior ends extend back as far as the angles of the jaw. A few scattered black tubercles usually are to be found in the area between the entering angles of this cross. Passing next to the neck and body we find the markings of a very different character. Assuming the yellow or orange to be the ground-colour, we discover that these parts are generally surrounded at irregular intervals by some four or five broad, fantastic, transverse bands, composed of the black tubercles on the dorsal aspect and the flatter scales on the nether parts. These bands are not of an unbroken black colour, but have both irregular borders and bizarre figures of the orange or yellow ground-colour over their internal areas, composed for the most part of blotches, bars, and hieroglyphical patterns, and sometimes the figures of these black bands may become confluent with each other. The colours are duller and paler on the ventral parts than they are above, although the general configuration still prevails, with ratber more marked confluence of the banding. Iu m y larger specimen there are also found in the transverse orange interspaces a iew scattered and small isolated spots of black, composed of, as usual, a few black tubercles which have merged at these localities. Generally the tail is marked by alternate bands of the same colours found upon the body ; these are commonly four or five in number, of about equal widths, and arranged so as to have the tail terminate in a black tip. |