"BEAKED LIZARDS." 11 



" sliminess " which makes these creatures so 

 objectionable to many. Among the reptiles the 

 young leave the egg in the form of the parent 

 that is to say, they never pass through a gill- 

 breathing stage. Further, the body is invested 

 in a scaly covering, and the skull moves upon 

 the backbone by means of a single bony knob, 

 instead of two such knobs, or " condyles " as 

 they are called, as in the frog and its allies. 

 Other characters there are whereby these two 

 groups the Reptiles and the " Amphibia" 

 may be distinguished, but we do not intend to 

 discuss them here. They are of too technical a 

 character for this little book. 



CHAPTER I. 



"BEAKED LIZARDS." 



AFTER the elimination of the alien tribes re- 

 ferred to in our Introduction, we have left four 

 large groups, the Crocodiles, the Tortoises and 

 Turtles, the Lizards, and the Snakes, and lastly, 

 a fifth, represented only by a single species, the 

 Tuatera lizard of New Zealand. This creature, 

 with certain fossil forms, constitutes the order 

 Rhynchocephalia, or beaked " lizards." 



Though but remnants of a fallen race, as we 

 have just remarked, these four groups are so 

 distinct one from another that it will be neces- 

 sary to tell the story of their rise and evolution 

 in as many separate chapters. 



