104 SAUEIANS. 



country-people are strongly prejudiced against them, believing 

 their bite to be a deadly poison. This animal is extremely brittle. 

 Laurent! and others assert that when captured it throws itself into 

 a position of such rigidity that it sometimes breaks in two, and 

 that a smart blow of a switch will at any' time divide it. 



[There are little-known species of Anguis in India and South 

 Africa, which are at least provisionally so considered, and certainly 

 do not differ essentially ; and next we come to forms in which the 

 limbs are successively more developed. Such are the Ophiodes 

 striatus of Brazil, which has two short, flattened, undivided, and 

 one-pointed limbs, corresponding to the usual hind pair; the 

 Brachymeles bonitce of the Philippines, in which there are two 

 pairs of short and rudimentary limbs, the fore bearing two minute 

 claws, whi le the hind are undivided ; Venira bicolor, of the same 

 archipelago, has very short limbs, the fore and hind being placed 

 distantly apart, but in this genus all have five distinct toes ; 

 Chiamelea lineata, from some part of India, and Hagria Vosmaerii, 

 from Bengal, are kindred forms which conduct to the genus 

 Eumeces, the species of which are very numerous, and spread over 

 nearly all the different countries between or near the tropics, and 

 in certain of them (as the Burmese E. anguinus) the limbs are still 

 remarkably diminutive, and (as in E. isodactylus of Cambodia) the 

 fore and hind limbs are placed very far apart, the body and tail 

 being long and anguiform. In various other species of Eumeces^ 

 however, the proportions are more those of an ordinary Scink, as 

 again in the kindred genera Mabonia and PlestiodoUy which are 

 widely distributed. 



In other series of Scinks, the distinctions of which are far from 

 being conspicuous, we again have limbless genera, or nearly so, 

 as the Australian Soridia lineata, which has one pair of small, 

 posterior, undivided extremities ; while in another Australian form, 

 the Rhodona punctata, the anterior pair of limbs are simple and 

 undivided, while the hinder divide into two unequal toes, and the 

 two pairs of limbs are situate as distantly apart. And thus we 

 may continue to trace the successive gradations, in sundry genera, 

 until we arrive at the Scincus officinalis of North Africa, a well- 

 known reptile, the geographical range of which extends eastward 

 into Afghanistan, and which was formerly in considerable request 



