CHAPTER III. 



REPTILES AND FISHES. 



WE now come to a class of animals, the personal 

 appearance of which is so little in their favour, that 

 scarcely one of the number can show itself without 

 incurring imminent danger of assault and battery from 

 those who are imperfectly acquainted with their cha- 

 racter and history we allude to the reptiles. If it 

 were more generally known than it is that, with one 

 exception, our Harting reptiles are perfectly harmless 

 to man, in an aggressive sense, and that our only 

 venemous one will, on all possible occasions, carefully 

 avoid him, unless roused to anger by some act of 

 provocation, they would be spared much undeserved 

 persecution. In their internal organisation these 

 animals differ greatly from the mammals and birds ; 

 but, like the latter, many among them are oviparous ; 

 some species in their early stage breathe by means of 

 gills like fishes ; and most of them present an analogy 

 to insects in the periodical casting of their skins. 



The Common Lizard (Zootoca vivipara) is our first 

 example, and is not at all uncommon among the heath 

 and furze on East Harting Down, where we have seen 

 and caught several specimens. It is five or six inches 

 in length ; of various shades of brown, with a dark line 

 down the middle of the back, and a band of the same 

 colour on each side the underside being of a lighter 

 shade and spotted. It is an elegant, active, little 

 animal, and wonderfully expert in capturing its insect 

 prey. On one occasion we saw one engaged in this 

 way on the upper bar of a field gate, and, on being 

 disturbed, it darted over the head of one of the posts 

 "like lightning" into a closely-trimmed quickset hedge, 



