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lateral curves the most graceful imaginable; but when alarmed, its 
swiftness is so excessive that it appears as if it literally flew over the 
ground, and the observer can scarcely persuade himself that it is not 
a bird. 
The Ground Lizard (as it is provincially termed) is generally dif- 
fused, as far as my knowledge of the island extends, but chiefly affects 
sandy places. Near the sea-side it is particularly abundant, beneath 
the shore-grasses, nickers, and black-withes that form an almost im- 
penetrable belt of thicket a few yards above high-water mark. Here 
the dry leaves and twigs are rustled all day long by the fleet-footed 
Ameiva, as it shoots hither and thither among them, or walks at 
leisure, picking up little atoms of food. Though excessively timid, 
so that it is almost impossible to approach them, I have found that 
by sitting down in their haunts, and remaining for some time per- 
fectly still, one and another will come forth from their coverts and 
pursue their avocations without fear. They pick among the sand 
exactly in the manner of a bird, and scratch it away with the long 
and flexible fore-feet, using them alternately as the common fowl 
does, now and then stopping and raising the hind-foot to scratch the 
head. 
I am told (and have no doubt of the fact) that it digs for itself the 
burrow in which it resides. It is accused too of digging still deeper, 
to get at the seed-corn when just sprouting, and of eating the ger- 
minating grain to such an extent as to be mischievous. Of such as 
I dissected, however, I found the food to consist principally of insects. 
Thus on one occasion the stomach was occupied with a whole cock- 
roach, and the intestines were filled with fragments of another. In 
the stomach of one shot in November I found many dipterous mag- 
gots, fragments of beetles, and one or two seeds of berries. A third 
contained cockroaches, a caterpillar, some maggots and small beetles. 
On one or two occasions, as when one has been suddenly alarmed, 
I have noticed a singular action in this animal, which then carries 
its body the whole height of the legs above the ground, and runs as 
it were on tiptoe ina very ludicrous manner. 
While speaking of its progression, I may observe, that though the 
toes are not formed like those of the Geckos and Anoles, for holding 
on against gravity, I have seen a large Ameiva run with facility on 
the side of a dry wall, along the perpendicular surfaces of the large 
stones. 
A gravid female was brought me early in May, in whose dilated 
abdomen I found four eggs, two on each side, disposed longitudinally, 
each lateral pair connected by membrane, or rather by the oviduct. 
They were in form long-oval, ;4, inch long by +45 wide, of a dull 
white, but covered with a fine membrane, over which spread a few 
blood-vessels. On making an incision into one I found no glaire, 
but the whole interior filled with a yellow yolk, exactly resembling 
in colour and consistence that of a pale hen’s egg. 
Two eggs were brought me about the middle of the same month, 
taken from a Ground Lizard’s burrow ; their form was a perfect oval, 
measuring ,% inch by ;4,; their colour white, except that the surface 
