6 OUR REPTILES. 



miniature representatives of their parents. In the 

 latter case the term " ovo-viviparous " is generally 

 applied, and in this sense we may, perhaps, have 

 occasion to use it. The features of a double life, 

 wherein one portion is spent in water, breathing by 

 means of gills, and the other on land, respiring with 

 lungs, will be illustrated when treating of toads and 

 frogs and other amphibians, so that it will lie un- 

 necessary to enter upon the subject here. 



For the purposes, not only of classification, but of 

 orderly description, the Keptilia are naturally divi- 

 sible into three orders, — of which the first are the 

 Chelonians or Tortoises and Turtles, the second the 

 Saurians or Lizards, and the third the Ophidians or 

 Snakes. The first, or Chelonians, are scarcely repre- 

 sented in Great Britain at all. The few turtles, 

 which have been borne in times past upon the waves 

 that wash our shores, and cast relentlessly upon our 

 coast, had 1 eally no business there, and only came as 

 occasional, distinguished, and probably involuntary 

 visitors. Under these circumstances we have given 

 them a place at the end of the volume, although, 

 according to rigid science, they should have been at 

 the beginning. 



The Saurian s or Lizards are represented in Britain 

 by four species, three having visible legs, and the 

 fourth snake-like in form. That the Sand Lizard 

 and the Viviparous Lizard, as well as the Slow-worm, 



