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Show 1890.] HELODERMA SUSPECTUM. 149 the best part of a hard-boiled hen's egg. Both of these acts, however, were performed with marked deliberation, so much so that one would little have suspected that the creatures were in any way particularly hungry. In eating they employ their broad, black, forked tongue to a considerable extent, protruding the organ slowly from the mouth, spreading it out, and licking the morsel well before it is taken into the mouth and swallowed. They may also, in drinking, occasionally be seen to lap the fluid with this organ, and still in a more or less deliberate manner. These two specimens have already been several months in m y keeping and under m y daily observation, during which time they have not eaten half a dozen hens' eggs between them, sometimes taking them hard-boiled, but as a rule seeming to prefer them raw ; they have refused all other nutriment which has been placed before them. 1 have shown elsewhere that another American lizard, Phry-nosoma, is capable of enduring an absolute fast for a period of three months or more ('Science,' vol. vi. no. 135, Sept. 4, 1885, pp. 185, 186) ; and it is a well-known fact that other reptiles can do likewise. Moreover I am quite sure, from what I have seen, that a good healthy adult Heloderma would prove to be another representative in this category, capable of sustaining a prolonged period without taking any nutriment whatever into its system. When one of these reptiles is placed on the open ground and left to itself, it soon takes itself off, and notwithstanding its rather awkward mode of progression makes withal very good time. Head, body, and tail are all kept in contact with the ground, while the alternate fore and hind limbs are thrown forwards as the animal takes its rather ample steps and keeps its way along, with no other apparent motive in its mind beyond making good its escape. In walking thus, it constantly protrudes, and again whips back into its mouth, its great black tongue, evidently to some degree using the organ as a detector of anything that may possibly stand in the road to impede its progress. If you now suddenly check it, the animal quickly rears its body from the ground by straightening out its limbs, wheels about, opens its mouth widely, snaps its tongue in and out, and gives vent to a threatening blowing sound. The whole aspect of the reptile, taking its great size into consideration, is now quite sufficient to keep the best of us at bay at first, and the moment it is let alone it takes the opportunity to make off again, usually in another direction. The bite of the Heloderma is now known to be venomous, and to small mammals soon fatal; but as the writer has elsewhere published accounts of this, the subject will not be reneAved in the present connexion (see A m . Nat., Nov. 1882, pp. 907, 908 ; ' Nature,' Dec. 14, 1882, p. 154 ; and 'Forest and Stream/ Aug. 4, 1887, p. 24). M y two specimens seem to be quite attached to each other, and are never so Well satisfied as when curled up together in a sunny corner of their cage; I am unable from their external characters to determine their sex, and this will only be possible later on, when we come to examine into their structure. These lizards are, too, very fond of basking in the hottest of noon- |