As I went eastward towards the desert, the number of this animal decreased, I suppose, from a scarcity of water; for example, at Palmyra, tho’ there were ruins of ancient buildings, and a great solitude, as at Baalbec, the lizards were few, all of the colour of the ground, without beauty or variety, and seemingly degenerated in point of size. The Arabian naturalists and physicians were better acquainted with the different species of this animal than any philosophers have been since, and in all probability than any strangers will ever be; they lived among them, and had an opportunity of discovering their manners and every detail of their private œconomy. Happy if succeeding the Greeks in these studies, they had not too frequently left observation to deviate into fable; the field, too, which these various species inhabit is a very extensive one, and comprehends all Asia and Africa, that is, great portion of the old world, every part of which is, from various causes, more inaccessible at this day, than after the Arabian conquest. It is from the Arabian books then that we are to study with attention the descriptions given of the animals of the country. But very great difficulties occur in the course of these disquisitions. The books that contain them are still extant, and all the animals likewise exist as before; but, unfortunately, the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Arabic, are languages very ambiguous and equivocal, and are in terms too loose and vague for modern accuracy and precise description, and especially so in that of colours; besides, that unbounded liberty of transposition of letters, and syllables of words, in which the writers of those languages have indulged themselves, from notions of elegance, seem to require, not only a very skilful and attentive, but also a judicious and sober-minded reader, that does not run away with whimsical, or first conceptions, but weighs the character of his author, the common idioms of language which he uses, and opportunities of information that he had concerning the subjects upon which he wrote, in preference to others that may have treated the same, but who differ from them in facts.