SLOW-WORM. 145 



hedgerows frequently in the daytime, later in the year it must 

 be sought in the dusk when it is food-finding. It then spends 

 the day under flat stones and in burrows. In Cornwall years 

 ago we could always find a number of Slow-worms by turning 

 over such loose stones along the top of the cliffs ; and we have 

 since found them pretty generally distributed without much 

 regard to the nature of the soil. Its principal enemies besides 

 man are the Viper and the Hedgehog. In the winter the 

 Slow-worm retires often in the company of half a dozen or 

 so of its own kind into an underground burrow or a hollow 

 beneath a large stone, and goes to sleep ; but it is the first of 

 the reptiles to reappear at the very beginning of spring. Like 

 its congeners it casts its skin from time to time apparently 

 about four times a year, but the frequency of the sloughing 

 depends, of course, upon whether it is a good slug year or the 

 reverse, for the shedding of the cuticle is in response to the 

 demand for more room for the growing body. The Slow-worm's 

 length of life is not known ; but it does not appear to attain to 

 sexual maturity until it is four or five years of age. We have 

 reliable knowledge of one that was captured when about a foot 

 in length (probably five or six years old), fifteen years ago, 

 which is still healthy and active. 



It was in the Slow- worm that the discovery was made in 1886 

 of vestiges of a degenerate median eye connected with the 

 pineal gland a discovery that set all the biological investi- 

 gators of the world at work. The same gland has in the last 

 few years been found to have important influence in controlling 

 the growth of the body in all vertebrates. 



The Slow-worm is generally distributed throughout the 

 British Islands, with the exception of Ireland ; it is much more 

 plentiful in the south and south-west of England than in the 

 east or north, but even in the south it is much more abundant 

 in some districts than in others. Its wider range includes all 

 but the extreme north of Europe, Western Asia, and Algeria. 



A.L. L 



