40 ANGUID.E. 



Specific Character. Silvery grey, a black longitudinal line extending down 

 the back. Scales rounded and plain. 



Anguisfragilis, LINN. Syst. Nat. I. p. 392. MULL. Zool. Dan. Prod. p. 36, 

 sp. 306. LAIR. Kept. IV. p. 209. DAVD. Kept. VII. 

 p. 327, t. Ixxxvii. f. 2. MERR. Syst. Araph. p. 79. 

 WAGL. Syst. Amph. p. 159. GRAY, Syn. Kept, in Griff. 

 An. Kingd. p. 74. FLEM. Brit. An. p. 155. JENYNS, 

 Brit. Vert. p. 295. CH. L. BONAP. Faun. Ital. c. icon. 



Orvet commun, Cov. Reg. An. 2 Edit. II. p. 70. 



Blind-worm, PENN. Brit. Zool. III. p. 36, t. iv. No. 15. 



THE group to which the genus Anguis belongs is one of 

 the most interesting in its relations of all the forms of Rep- 

 tilia. Under external characters considerably differing from 

 each other, some possessing the limbs and locomotion of true 

 Lizards, and others wholly devoid of external members and 

 moving like true Saurians, there are in Mr. Gray's order 

 Saurophidia many points of mutual affinity which prevent 

 the possibility of separating them from each other. From 

 the well-known family of the Stinks, or Stincida, with their 

 true legs and five-toed feet, down to the present species and 

 its immediate congeners, every possible gradation is to be 

 found in the developement of the anterior and posterior ex- 

 tremities. Agreeing, as they all do, in the Saurian character 

 of the structure of the head, the consolidation of the bones 

 of the cranium and jaws, and the narrow and confined gape, 

 so different from these parts in the true Serpents, they yet 

 approach the latter in the comparative length of the bodies, 

 and in the gradual diminution and ultimate disappearance of 

 the extremities. In the genus Scincus, for instance, the 

 limbs are already less robust than those of the true Saurians ; 

 the two pairs are also more distant from each other, in con- 

 sequence of the greater comparative elongation of the body. 

 There are as yet five perfect toes on each foot, which, how- 

 ever, are shorter and more even in their relative proportions 

 than in the true Saurians. These deviations become in- 



