TAME BLTNDWOKMS. 63 



consciousness of deserving valour. Between his hands he held his felt hat tightly 

 crumpled together, and within the hat was discovered, after much careful manoeuvring, 

 the head of a Blindworm emerging from one of its folds. 



As I put out my hand to remove the creature, the man fairly screamed with horror, 

 and even when I took it in my hand, and allowed it to play its tongue over the fingers, 

 he could not believe that it was not poisonous. No argument could persuade that worthy 

 man that the reptile was harmless, and nothing could induce him to lay a finger upon it ; 

 the prominent idea in his mind being evidently, not that the Blindworm had no poison, 

 but that I was poison-proof. To add to his alarm, the creature had snapped off its tail 

 during the rough handling to which it had been subjected, a proceeding which, by his 

 peculiar process of reasoning, only corroborated its venomous properties. 



In its wild state the Blindworm feeds mostly on slugs, but will also eat worms and 

 various insects. Some persons assert that it devours mice and reptiles, but that it should 

 do so is a physical impossibility, owing to the very small dimensions of the mouth, and 

 the structure of the jaw, the bones of which are firmly knitted together, and cannot 

 be separated while the prey is being swallowed, as is the case with the snakes. 



In captivity it seems to reject almost any food except slugs, but these molluscs it will 

 eat quite freely. The specimen from which the illustration was drawn, has been in my 

 possession for about four months, and has proved a very interesting creature. After 

 keeping it for a fortnight, I procured six or seven white garden slugs, and placed them 

 in the glass vessel together with the Blindworm. 



The reptile instantly saw its prey, but did not move from its place, merely following 

 with a slow movement of the head the course of one of the nlugs that crawled within an 

 inch or two of its nose. Presently it raised its head very deliberately, and hovered over 

 the slug as it glided along, and after following it for an inch or two, quickly opened its 

 mouth to the full extent, lowered its head, and grasped the slug just behind the head, 

 squeezing it with some force, and causing a great commotion among the muscles of the foot. 



Presently it relaxed its hold a little, again opened its mouth and took a fresh grasp, 

 and after three or four of these movements, it contrived how I cannot comprehend, 

 though I have watched the creature over and over again to get the head of the slug 

 down its throat. The process of swallowing was then very easy, and after a few more 

 efforts, the whole of the mollusc had disappeared. After resting for a few minutes, it 

 attacked another slug precisely in the same manner ; but I have seldom seen it eat more 

 than two or three at one meal. By degrees it caught and ate all the slugs, and will finish 

 a dozen in a week or ten days. 



Upon the 12th of September my Blindworm unexpectedly became the mother of a 

 numerous progeny, nine little Blindworms having made their appearance in the world 

 during the night. They are remarkably pretty little creatures, and so unlike their parent 

 that few persons would attribute them to the same species. They are much more 

 serpentine in their general aspect, their heads being considerably wider than their necks, 

 whereas in the adult the head and neck are as nearly as possible of the same width. 



Their colour is shining creamy yellow above, and jetty black below, the line of 

 demarcation running along the flanks, and being very sharply defined. Along the back 

 runs a narrow black line, which upon the head is expanded, and then divides so as to 

 form a letter Y. Just above the nose is another forked black mark, looking like an 

 inverted V, and both these letters have a, notable circular enlargement at the angle. As 

 the creature grows, the V mark becomes gradually uncertain, and finally disappears, but 

 the black line down the back, and its Y-like termination, retain their position through 

 life, though they are not so conspicuous as in the young, owing to the darker colouring of 

 the surface. 



How these little things feed I cannot make out. They were born on the 12th of 

 September, as has already been mentioned, and though they have now lived for about five 

 weeks, have grown considerably, and have always been very lively, they have taken no 

 food so far as I can discover. For the first three weeks of their life, they lived in a glass 

 jar closed at the top, and with an inch or so of dry earth at the bottom, in which there 

 could be no nourishment. A little milk was poured on the mould now and then, a 



