MONITOR LIZARD, the type of a family of pleurodont lizards (Varnidci). They are found in Africa, the Eastern Archipelago, etc., and are the largest of modern lizards, some species attaining a length of six or eight feet. The skin is covered with very small juxtaposed scales and tubercles dorsally, while ventrally the scales are square and arranged transversely. The tail is long, cylindrical in the terrestrial, but compressed laterally in the aquatic forms, and pos§esses a sharp underridge or keel. The limbs are well developed and the toes provided with claws. Most of these great greenish-gray lizards inhabit rivers and ponds, and are active and fierce enemies of all lesser aquatic life. They feed upon eggs and young of crocodiles, turtles and aquatic birds; and on fishes, amphi bians, swimming-birds, anything in fact, small enough to be mastered. There is one genus
and nearly 30 species. The most familiar species, probably, is that of the Nile and other African rivers (Varanus niloticus), upon which the English name ((monitor"' was first fastened by a ridiculous misinterpretation of the Arabic word ouaran (lizard) ; it is aquatic and fre quently exceeding five feet in length. An equally well known kind is the East Indian monitor (V. salvator), which is to be met with from Ceylon and western India to the Philip pines, and is equally at home in the water, on land or in trees. Its rapacity is great and varied; and it is connected with many extraor dinary rites and superstitions among_ the na tives, some of which are given in Fennent's 'Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon' (1861). Australia has a large species (V. gouldi).