_Blood-suckers_.--The lizards already mentioned, however, are but the stranger's introduction to innumerable varieties of others, all most attractive in their sudden movements, and some unsurpassed in the brilliancy of their colouring, which bask on banks, dart over rocks, and peer curiously out of the chinks of every ruined wall. In all their motions there is that vivid and brief energy, the rapid but restrained action associated with their limited power of respiration, which justifies the accurate picture of-- "The green lizard, rustling thro' the grass, And up the fluted shaft, _with short, quick, spring_ To vanish in the chinks which time has made."[1] [Footnote 1: ROGERS' _Pæstum._] The most beautiful of the race is the _green calotes_[1], in length about twelve inches, which, with the exception of a few dark streaks about the head, is as brilliant as the purest emerald or malachite. Unlike its congeners of the same family, it never alters this dazzling hue; whilst many of them possess, but in a less degree, the power, like the chameleon, of exchanging their ordinary colours for others less conspicuous. One of the most remarkable features in the physiognomy of those lizards is the prominence of their cheeks. This results from the great development of the muscles of the jaws; the strength of which is such that they can crush the hardest integuments of the beetles on which they feed. The calotes will permit its teeth to be broken, rather than quit its hold of a stick into which it may have struck them. It is not provided, like so many other tropical lizards, with a gular sac or throat-pouch, capable of inflation when in a state of high excitement. The tail, too, is rounded, not compressed, thus clearly indicating that its habits are those of a land-animal. [Footnote 1: Calotes sp.] The _Calotes versicolor_; and another, the _Calotes ophioimachus_, of which a figure is attached, possess in a remarkable degree the faculty, above alluded to, of changing their hue. The head and neck, when the animal is irritated or hastily swallowing its food, become of a brilliant red (whence the latter species has acquired the name of the "blood-sucker"), whilst the usual tint of the rest of the body is converted into pale yellow.[1] The _sitana_[2], and a number of others, exhibit similar phenomena. [Footnote 1: The characteristics by which the _Calotes ophiomachus_ may be readily recognised, are a small crest formed by long spines running on each side of the neck to above the ear, coupled with a green ground-colour of the scales. Many specimens are uniform, others banded transversely with white, and others again have a black band on each side of the neck.] [Footnote 2: Sitana Ponticereana, _Cuv_.] The lyre-headed lizard[1], which is not uncommon in the woods about Kandy, is more bulky than any of the species of Calotes, and not nearly so active in its movements. [Footnote 1: Lyriocephalus scutatus, _Linn._]