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CHAPTER XXV. 



ANACONDA AND ANGUIS FA'AGILIS. 



MAXIMUS and Minimus. Yet by right of its name 

 Anguis, our little slow-worm — truly a lizard — claims 

 a place in these pages ; by right of form also, and by right 

 of promise ; and still further, because on the authority of 

 some of our eminent physiologists there is in the dentition 

 of some of the boas an affinity with lizards ; and inasmuch 

 as this little limbless lizard affords a good example of those 

 whose ancestry, as Huxley tells us, found it profitable to 

 do without their legs and become snakes, she shall be 

 introduced in company with the largest of all her ophidian 

 cousins. 



Anaconda also, in having vestiges of hind limbs, affords 

 in these another example of what Darwin calls atrophied 

 organs, remnants of what were once, no doubt, a pair of 

 very excellent saurian legs. 



Illustrious naturalists who were authorities in their day — 

 as, for instance, Linnaeus and Cuvier — included slow-worms 

 with serpents, the links between them being so close. 



