AMPHISB.-ENAS. 



157 



the Tropic of Cancer, although also occurring in the West Indies, while Africa 

 possesses over twenty species, and four are found in the Mediterranean area. Of 

 their habits, Mr. Boulenger observes that all the members of this family are 

 burrowers, and may live in ants' nests. They bore narrow galleries in the earth, 

 in which they are able to progress backwards as well as forwards. On the ground 

 they progress in a straight line by slight vertical undulations, not by lateral 

 movements, as in other limbless reptiles ; and the tail of many species appears to 

 be more or less prehensile. The food of these lizards consists of small insects and 

 worms. As regards their breeding- habits, it is only known that one species lays 

 eggs, which are deposited in ants' nests. The marked resemblance of these lizards 

 to earth-worms is a most curious instance of the similarity produced in the external 



HANDED AMPHISB.ENA (nat. size 



form of different groups of animals by adaptation to similar modes of life ; the 

 remarkable feature in this case being the occurrence of this resemblance in 

 creatures so widely sundered from one another, as are worms and amphisbsenas. 

 Fossil members of the family have been discovered in the Tertiary rocks of North 

 America. 



Handed The one member of the family which exhibits evidence of its 



Ampnisbaena. relationship to less specialised lizards in the retention of rudimentary 

 fore - limbs is the handed amphisbsena (Chirotes caniculatus), of Mexico and 

 California ; this being one of the two species found on the continent of America to 

 the north of the Tropic of Cancer. This creature, which attains a length of about 

 7 inches, and is of a brownish flesh-colour, is distinguished by the presence of 

 a pair of small depressed fore-limbs, placed close to the head, to which they are 

 about equal in length ; each of these being provided with four well-developed and 

 clawed toes, of which the outermost is the shortest. 



