SAND LIZARD. 27 
dimensions can scarcely admit of a reasonable doubt on 
the subject. The locality mentioned by him as its most 
usual resort,—namely, on heaths,—is also, as far as it goes, 
a confirmatory fact. 
It is to Mr. Jenyns, however, that we owe the only 
clear and satisfactory published description of this species 
as a native of Britain; and his account of its characters is 
as admirable for its correctness and perspicuity as any of 
the other descriptions of that accomplished author. 
It is from the immediate vicinity of my own native place 
that the specimens which have hitherto formed the sub- 
jects of more recent observation have been obtained. I 
have been familiar with it from my childhood; and its 
frequency in various parts of the sandy heaths around 
Poole and its neighbourhood gave me, when young, nume- 
rous opportunities of observing the remarkable difference of 
size between this and the other native species ;—from 
which circumstance I had, even then, often suspected that 
they were distinct. Subsequently, when the prosecution 
of the study of Erpetology might perhaps have enabled me 
to distinguish them, the opportunity of observing them had 
ceased, until Mr. Jenyns, having, through Mr. Yarrell, ob- 
tained specimens from Poole, seized, with his usual acumen, 
upon the point of distinction, and speedily discovered the 
identity of this species with the ZL. stirpium of Daudin, of 
Milne Edwards, and of Dugés. 
I shall be readily pardoned this long and somewhat dry 
investigation of the synonymy of this species by every 
systematic Zoologist who appreciates the importance of 
precision on this subject; and I now proceed to give a 
short history of its habits, as far as I have had an oppor- 
tunity of observing them. 
This beautiful species is found in the neighbourhood of 
