[Footnote 1: The ancients are said to have derived the art of navigation from these animals, which, in calm weather, are seen floating on the surface of the water, with some of their tentacula extended at their sides, while two arms that are furnished with membranaceous appendages serve the office of sails.

Mr. Cunningham found a very curious species of lizard, remarkable for having a thin, membranaceous appendage attached to the back of its head and round the neck and falling over its shoulders in folds as low as the fore arm.

Sterile segment sessile above the middle of the plant, broadly triangular, thin, membranaceous, ternate.

The filmy ferns are small, delicate plants with membranaceous, finely dissected fronds from slender, creeping rootstocks.

This genus is at once distinguished from the former, and indeed from the whole of the Scincidae, by the large hard scales that cover the back of the body and head; which are formed of distinct triangular long plates, rough on the outside, and covered with a membranaceous skin.

The outside is of a dull greenish-purple colour, with a few distant membranaceous laminae which are only slightly lobed, and not extended into long processes like those of Avicula radiata (Zool. Misc.