British Reptiles and Amphibians 



Earth-worms. The digestive tract is adapted to the 

 food habit, the flesh-eating Lizards having short intes- 

 tines, while in the vegetable feeders the intestine is 

 relatively long. There is also a great variety of 

 coloration among these creatures. Lizards that dwell 

 in warm quarters, where the sun parches the soil and 

 withers the green blades, are usually a warm brown or 

 faint red in hue, while succulent vegetation usually 

 shelters intense or brilliantly coloured examples. This 

 blending of the colour of an animal with the colour of 

 its habitat is undoubtedly protective, and is common 

 throughout Nature. The Pallas Sand Grouse from 

 Asia Minor and the East, that dwells in sandy wastes 

 and loves the soil of the Steppes of Tartary, is of a 

 pale yellow colour, in keeping with its natural environ- 

 ment. The Yellow Hammer sitting on a furze bush 

 is a homely example of adaptation, the Water Rail 

 moving through the reedy swamp another. A Toad 

 leaping over the lawn in the evening hour rests by the 

 lilac-tree, and the eye fails to detect its presence. In 

 the garden and the field, in the waste lands and on the 

 hill-face, Nature protects and is protected. 



Viviparous Lizard (Lacerta vivipara, Plate II.). 



As a student and collector of natural objects, my 

 mind can " hark back," as fox-hunters say, to a May 

 morning when the Whinchats and a few Redstarts had 

 taken up residence in our garden policies. Although 

 within a month of midsummer, the trees looked gloomy 



16 



