126 A NATURE WOOING. 



ish Museum/ 7 enumerates sixty-one existing species 

 of Amphisbmnidae, the family to which these curious 

 snake-like saurians belong. Of these, thirty-eight are 

 American, but one of which, the species at hand, oc- 

 curs north of the Tropic of Cancer, though remains 

 of a fossil form, Rhineura hatclierii Bauer, have been 

 found in the Oligocene rocks of South Dakota. 



As in most other subterranean and cave forms, rudi- 

 ments of eyes are present, concealed beneath the 

 skin. All the members of the family are burrowers, 

 and many live in ants' nests. They bore narrow gal- 

 leries in the earth, in which, like an earth worm, they 

 are able to move 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. The tail of many species is 

 more or less prehensile. The food of all these lizards 

 consists mainly of ants and other small insects and 

 worms.* 



March SO, 1899. Seventy-two degrees at break- 

 fast time ! What a change from yesterday ! It threat- 

 ens rain, but rains not. The sky is overcast with 

 clouds, yet, at intervals, the sun thrusts his counte- 

 nance here ever smiling through the rifts and 

 beams upon me. I take my way slowly to the base of 

 the friendly pine. The tree sympathizes with me 

 when human beings lack in sympathy. 



* I afterwards took two mangled specimens of this lizard in the road- 

 way near the shell mound; and since returning to Indiana, have had a 

 number of specimens sent me from the vicinity of Ormond. 



