38 APPENDIX: NO. XXXVIII. 
XXXVIII. 
On tHE Green Lizarp [Lacerra rreipis). 
[‘ Zoologist,’ viii. (1850) pp. 2707, 2708.] 
I nore the editor of the ‘ Zoologist’ will have the kindness, as soon 
as possible, to gratify the curiosity which he has roused by his short 
notice on this subject, in the notices to correspondents on the 
wrapper of the number for January. We must, before we assent 
to the discovery of a ‘‘ new British Reptile,” learn how far it has 
been traced in the neighbourhood in which it has been discovered. 
I have several times had reason for suspecting the Green Lizard 
might be British, independently of the passage in White’s ‘ Natural 
History of Selborne’ [Letter XXII. to Pennant], and the stories of 
large Lizards met with elsewhere. Seven or eight years ago a school- 
fellow of mine at Eton, a native of Guernsey, assured me he had seen 
Lizards in Devonshire‘ precisely similar to the Green Lizards of his 
own island, which latter, if I remember right, he had often caught and 
kept in confinement. Nearly two years since, a learned professor of 
the University of Edinburgh, mentioned that he had dissected a 
“Green Lizard,’ brought by a botanical party from the Cloon 
Mountains, of which, however, the remnants were not to be found, 
when search was, at my request, made for them. I hope these two 
additional indications of the probability of its being British may not 
be unacceptable. I may add that last summer, in answer to my 
inquiries in Sutherlandshire, I was told a large species of Lizard 
was stated by the shepherds to be found in a particular district, 
Moudale, which my imagination led me to believe was the Green 
Lizard. However, on further inquiry in the place mentioned, the 
accounts seemed far more applicable to the commen Warty Newt. 
I saw the Common Lizard in plenty, though not extending to the 
Shetland or Faroe Islands, and I did not see it in Orkney. 
Edinburgh, 
January 6, 1850. 
1 [This seems to me possible, as I remember Mr. Burt, the excellent Curator or 
the Torquay Museum, telling me, more than fifty years ago, that, some time before, 
a considerable number brought alive from the Channel Islands had been let loose 
in the neighbourhood, by one Ardleigh or Ardley, an old man who got his living 
by collecting and selling objects of Natural History—fossils, plants, insects, and 
so on. I do not suppose, however, that the Lizards multiplied or even maintained 
themselves for long.— Ev. | 
