Zoology.] NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. [Reptilia. 



unlike Lizards, the halves of the lower jaw are not joined together 

 in front, and the mouth, by its inferior position, like that of a Shark, 

 below and behind the tip of the snout, differs equally from Lizards 

 and Snakes. The small number of teeth, and their being either in 

 the upper or under jaw, but not in both, is a special peculiarity of 

 the group of Worm- Snakes. Another peculiarity of this group is 

 the fact of the eyes being covered by one or two large plates of the 

 side of the head, and through the translucent substance of these 

 plates the eyes underneath may be dimly seen when they exist. 

 Some seem to be blind, as, indeed, their subterranean habits 

 and finding the Earth- Worms and larvae of insects for food, in the 

 dark earth, without the sense of sight, might lead one to expect. 



By a sort of practical joke, not uncommon in nature, the posterior, 

 or tail end, in this species is made to look almost exactly like a 

 head, by a pair of round black spots, so nearly of the size, shape, 

 and color of the real eyes of the other end, and so similarly placed 

 over the ends of the transverse, lunate, mouth-like slit on the 

 ventral surface of that end, as to be readily taken for the eyes by 

 an unpractised observer, taking away even the crucial test by 

 which the boys in Leech's caricature terminated their dispute as to 

 which was the head of the Skye terrier, by one at last "seeing the 

 eyes " at the most unlikely end. The presence of these two eye- 

 like posterior spots is almost the only character set down by Prof. 

 Jan as distinguishing his T. Ruppelli from Gray's T. nigrescens ; 

 but as the only specimens in which I could not see these spots had 

 the skin so opaque, from being near the time of casting it (when 

 the real eyes are also obscured), I have no doubt of both belonging 

 to one species, as Prof. Peters has already suggested in the 

 Monatsbericht der Konigl. Preuss. Akad. cler Wissenschaften zu 

 Berlin, for June 1865, p. 262. There is, too, a singularly deceptive 

 appearance produced by the transparent scales of the back, showing 

 the semicircular dark margin, not only on the exposed, posterior 

 edge of each, but continued visibly through the transparent, 

 adjacent, overlapping scales, so that the apparent scales marked 

 by the coloring do not coincide with the real scales marked by the 

 free edges, as seen with a lens and as represented in our figure (l/*). 



Although Dr. Gray was the first to describe this species (under 



Vol. II.— Decade XL— c. 9 



