82 REPTILES AND BATRACHIANS 



bourhood of Southport in Lancashire. On the Continent 

 it is generally distributed over the Northern and Central 

 parts. It is larger and more heavily built than the 

 Common Lizard, and, in spite of its specific name, not 

 nearly so active. The female is brown, with numerous 

 conspicuous black-and-white eye-spots on the back and 

 sides, while the male, especially in the spring, is of a most 

 beautiful emerald green on the sides and belly, and 

 is consequently continually being confounded with the 

 Green lizard, L. viridis, of the Channel Islands and 

 Central and Southern Europe. The latter, which 

 reaches a length of nearly a foot, is entirely green above, 

 with a blue throat in the male of the typical form. 

 Although seldom living for much more than a year in 

 captivity, it does well in this country if given its freedom, 

 a number of specimens imported some years ago by the 

 Hon. Cecil Baring, and let loose on the small island of 

 Lambay, off Dublin, having maintained themselves and 

 multiplied. The movements of these lizards during the 

 warmer parts of the day are bewilderingly rapid, and this, 

 combined with the fact that bramble bushes or gorse 

 usually form their hiding-places, at least in the Channel 

 Islands and Brittany, makes their capture no easy matter. 

 The eggs, about half a dozen in number, laid in April 

 or May, are hatched about a month later. 



The variety major of this species, which inhabits Dal- 

 matia, Turkey, Greece, and Asia Minor, attains a length 

 of fifteen inches ; it differs from the typical form in a 

 larger number of scales round the body, and in the throat 

 never being blue, but always yellow, like the rest of its 

 under-surfaces. The young also differ in colour, being 



