APRIL DA YS 59 



in which direction it had gone ; and another 

 observer, and one of repute, has told me of his 

 own similar experience with this animal. As with 

 the lizard, when seized, the blindworm's only 

 artifice is to break off its tail and leave this to 

 reward the activity of the enemy. In a garden it 

 is very useful as a destroyer of slugs ; but it is 

 there exposed to the attack of the cat, which will 

 not hesitate to devour it. Fowls also will eat it, 

 or, indeed, a lizard or a snake. But in an en- 

 closed rockwork fernery it will survive for many 

 years. 



In the year 1880 I found an exceptionally large 

 blindworm, eighteen inches long, and liberated it in 

 a fernery of this kind, where the dense, self-sown 

 plants completed an almost ideal habitat for such 

 a tenant, and the busy worms and small slugs 

 offered plenty of food, while a daily watering pro- 

 vided against thirst. Already other blindworms 

 were there, but rarely seen. The new-comer took 

 up its quarters in a certain corner, and climbed 

 every day to a spot where it could bask in sun- 

 shine tempered by the rough glass of the roof. It 

 proved to be a female, and in two successive years, 



