Reptiles and Batrachians of the Edinburgh District. 495 
Clas REPTILIA, 
Order SAURIA. 
LACERTA VIVIPARA, Jacq. THE COMMON OR 
Viviparous LIzarp. 
This nimble and pretty little reptile is oecasionally to 
be found during the spring, summer, and early autumn 
months, basking in the sunshine on warm grassy banks and 
heather-clad moors and hillsides, or concealed among stones, 
in holes in walls, rocks, etc., close by; but, though widely 
distributed, it is nowhere common. 
In the immediate vicinity of the city, the Queen’s Park 
has long been known as a habitat, and is mentioned as such 
in Stark’s “Picture of Edinburgh” (1834 ed., p. 524). I 
have myself captured it within the park—among the loose 
stones below Salisbury Crags—so recently as March 1889, 
and I have a still later record (1890) for Blackford Hill, on 
the south side of the city. 
As an inhabitant of the Pentlands, where it is widely, 
but very sparingly distributed, we find Rhind referring 
to it more than sixty years ago as “occasionally visible” 
(“ Excursions,” 1833 ed., p. 55); and still earlier, namely in 
1808, Neill recorded it as occurring at Habbie’s Howe, near 
Carlops (“Gentle Shepherd,” i, 273).4 In August 1888, 
I obtained a specimen on Bavelaw Moss, above Balerno ; 
and I have notes of its oceurrence within recent years at 
Harper-rig (1877), Harburnhead (several occasions, seven to 
ten years ago), slopes of the North Blackhill above Loganlee 
(several occasions), and on Kinleith Hill above Currie (1893) ; 
also at Baddinsgill, above West Linton, where Mr T. G. 
Laidlaw tells me several were seen last summer about bee- 
hives. It has also been observed, I believe, on the Dalmahoy 
Hills. 
The writer of the article on natural history in Chambers’s 
“History of Peeblesshire,” 1864, includes the common 
1JIn these and similar works it is, as we would expect, designated Lacerta 
agilis, in conformity with the nomenclature in use. among British naturalists 
prior to the publication of Bell’s History of British Reptiles. 
VOL. XII. 2K 
