From snout to vent 2 inches [5 cm]; tail 4 [10 cm]." Description from A. Günther's "The Reptiles of British India" (1864): "Two loreals; the central occipital very small. The lower eyelid transparent; temples with small, hexagonal, keeled scales of equal size. Dorsal scales keeled, rhombic. Ventral scales in six longitudinal and twenty-five or twenty-six transverse series. Vent covered with a larger central scale, surrounded by other small ones. Fifteen or sixteen femoral pores. Brown, with two broad whitish bands on each side, the upper arising from the superciliary and running along the side of the back, the lower proceeding from below the eye and ear along; the middle of the side. Total length 5 1/2 inches [14 cm], of head and trunk 2 inches [5 cm]. The specimens in the Paris Museum are said to be from the coast of Coromandel. Jerdon (Journ. Bengal, xxii. p. 476) says that he has recognized the species: "it is somewhat locally distributed. I have seen it in the Salem and Coimbatoor districts only, especially near the banks of the Cauvery. It frequents bushy ground, hedges of "Euphorbia" and clumps of Cactus." Mr. Blyth adds that the Museum at Calcutta contains examples of what he takes to be this species, from Pind Dadun Khan, in the Punjab Salt Range; and that it formerly possessed the same from Afghanistan." The specific name, "leschenaultii", commemorates French naturalist Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour.