60 BRITISH LIZARDS 



of Mr. Linnaeus Greening, of Warrington, ' Common ; 

 Wallasey, Southport, and Formby sandhills.' The 

 Cheshire locality is included on the strength of 

 specimens which were shown to Mr. Greening by the 

 late C. S. Gregson, who stated that he had obtained 

 them at Wallasey. The sandhills between West 

 Kirby and New Brighton were of the same character 

 as those extending along the Lancashire coast from 

 Liverpool to the mouth of the Eibble, and it is a 

 generally accepted theory that the river Mersey, 

 within geologically recent times, used to empty itself 

 into the sea considerably to the west of its present 

 mouth ; so that at one time the Wallasey coast-line 

 was north of the river. The spread of the suburban 

 residential districts round Liverpool, the growth of 

 seaside resorts, such as Hoylake and West Kirby, 

 and the formation of golf links all along the coast 

 have destroyed a large portion of these sandhills ; 

 but there are considerable stretches in both counties 

 where the lizard may still exist. The sand lizard 

 is not known in Cumberland or Westmoreland, and, 

 although many miles of the North Wales coast, from 

 the mouth of the Dee westward, are, or were, similar 

 in character to the Cheshire shores, I know of no 

 record of the sand lizard from the Principality. The 

 evidence therefore shows that L. agilis, generally con- 

 sidered to be only an inhabitant of some of the 

 southern counties, occurs in the north, on a strip of 

 sandhills bordering the Irish Sea, from the mouth 



