These semi-aquatic, dingy-hued saurians are admirably adapted to the hot moist swamps and shallow lagoons that fringe the rivers of the tropical alluvial plains. As we watch their dark forms, plunging and wallowing in the water, or sluggishly moving over the soft and slimy mud, the imagination is carried back to the age of reptiles, when the muddy shores of the primæval ocean swarmed with their uncouth forms. The huge lizard, six or seven feet long, to which divine honours are paid at Bonny on the coast of Guinea, belongs most likely to this amphibious class. Undisturbed, the lazy monsters crawl heavily through the streets, and as they pass, the negroes reverentially make way. A white man is hardly allowed to look at them, and hurried as fast as possible out of their presence. An attempt was once made to kidnap one of these dull lizard-gods for the benefit of a profane museum, but the consequences were such as to prevent a repetition of the offence, for all trade and intercourse with the ships in harbour was immediately stopped, and affairs assumed so hostile an aspect, that the foreigners were but too glad to purchase peace with a considerable sacrifice of money and goods. When one of these lizards crawls into a house, it is considered a great piece of good fortune; and when it chooses to take a bath, the Bonnians hurry after it in their canoes. After having allowed it to swim a stretch, and to plunge several times, they seize it for fear of danger, and carry it back again to the land, well pleased at once more having the sacred reptile in their safe possession. The formidable name of Flying Dragons has been given to a genus of small lizards, remarkable for the expansible cutaneous processes with which the sides are furnished, and by whose means they are enabled to spring with more facility from branch to branch, and even to support themselves for some time in the air, like the bat or flying-squirrel. The tiny painted Dragon of the East, the Flying Lizard of the woods, is fond of clinging with its wings to the smooth trunks of trees, and there remaining immovable, basking in the sun. When disturbed, it leaps and shuffles away in an awkward manner. One Mr. Adams had in his possession, reminded him of a bat when placed on the ground. Sometimes the strange creature would feign death, and remain perfectly motionless, drooping its head, and doubling its limbs, until it fancied the danger over, then cautiously raising its crouching form, it would look stealthily around, and be off in a moment. The dragon consumes flies in a slow and deliberate manner, swallowing them gradually; its various species belong exclusively to India and the islands of the Eastern Archipelago. [Illustration: FLYING DRAGON.] Who has not heard of the fatal glance of the _basilisk_, which, according to poetical fancy, obliged all other poisonous animals to keep at a respectful distance ‘from monster more abhorr’d than they’?