Abstract
LAST August, while superintending the burning of some dry bush in my pasture, I was surprised to see a ground lizard (Lacerta agilis) run up to the flames and stop on a bed of hot ashes. My little son whd Was with me endeavoured to turn it aside with a stick, but on his trying to do so, it darted into the fire and was soon consumed. This I thought at the time accidental, but later in the day we returned to the same spot, and in a few minutes a larger lizard of the same species deliberately ran up to the burning bush; it paused on the warm ashes wagging its tail to and fro, apparently enjoying the heat, when all of a sudden it darted into the flames, and like the first one was instantly a willing holocaust. I turned to the Negro, who was burning the bush, for explanation, but like most of his race he accepted the fact as a matter of course, remarking “lizard seem to love fire.” My ideas went back to the legends of the salamander. The story of the French consul at Rhodes (M. Pothonier), who one day found his cook in a terrible fright thinking the “devil was in the fire,” and when he looked into the bright flames, saw there a little animal with open mouth and palpitating throat, and on trying to secure it with the tongs, it ran into a heap of hot ashes. He secured it and gave it to Buffon, who found it to be a small lizard, whose feet and a portion of the body were half roasted. M. Pothonier first thought it was incombustible, having remained in the fire three minutes, but imagined that it might have been brought in with the fuel. Nicander, Dioscorides and Pliny, all allude to the fire-proof qualities of the “salamandra.” Aristotle speaks of the salamandra's power of extinguishing fire with the copious secretion of saliva which it has the power of ejecting into the flames. As far as my own observation goes all lizards have the power of ejecting saliva. The Negroes have a dread of the croaking lizard's (Gecko) “spitting” at them. I do not believe that any Jamaica lizard has poisonous saliva, but that the saliva is deleterious, I am quite sure. That cats get “fits” from eating lizards is a well accepted fact, their hair falls out, and they become sick and droop, confirming the belief in the depilatory properties of the salamander's saliva. As Martial puts it (Lib. ii. Ep. lxi.):—
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CARGILL, J. The Lizard. Nature 21, 81 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/021081b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021081b0
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