1902 Reproduction of the Sloiv-Worin 289 



Homoptera not treated of by Edwards ; Verrall's and 

 Theobald's * Diptera ' ; Cameron's ' Sawflies ' ; McLachlan's 

 ' Neuroptera,' and Lucas's ' Odonata ' or dragon-flies, which 

 is a part of that order ; Barrett's ' Lepidoptera,' and various 

 other standard works, which do not occur to me at the 

 moment, for their name is legion, and many of them deal 

 with only one family or group. Several sections have been 

 quite neglected in Britain, and we have nothing but 

 scattered notes and monographs, in the various magazines, 

 to help us in the determination of, for instance, parasitic 

 flies of all kinds, which are extremely numerous, and cry 

 aloud for students, who, we trust, will ere long arise to 

 elucidate this tangled skein. 



A Note on the Reproduction of the 

 Slow=Worm. 



By Rev. S. Cornish Watkins, B.A. 



In view of the special attention which is given to observa- 

 tions on the life -history of our indigenous reptiles in the 

 ' Field Naturalist's Quarterly,' it may be of interest to put 

 on record the following facts which have come under my 

 notice this autumn. In the last issue of this journal Dr 

 Leighton dealt with the subject of Reproduction in his 

 series of Reptile Studies, and the observations that I have 

 made on the slow-worm {Anguis fragilis) since the summer 

 number appeared seem to add somewhat to what was there 

 stated. 



On September 8, 1902, I captured two female slow- 

 worms under a large stone in a disused quarry. They 

 were evidently heavy with young. I placed them in a 

 glass-covered box, with some damp moss, and kept them 

 liberally supplied with slugs, their favourite diet. Each of 

 them has since then brought forth a litter of young ones, 

 the one on September 20th, the other on the 24th, and in 

 each case the litter numbered twelve. This is the maximum 

 number stated by Dr Leighton to occur. I measured the 



