1620 The Zoologist— April, 1869. 



to the other, there are fifty scutes; the central plates are in eight 

 rows, the outer ones being short and composed of small plates. The 

 colour is generally vivid green ; but in a specimen for nearly two years 

 in ray garden, this colour was mixed with yellow and brown in spots, 

 and the belly and under parts were entirely yellow. The length is 

 fourteen or fifteen inches. Although having had living specimens 

 from Jersey in my possession at different times, I never took the 

 opportunity of describing either of them, and am therefore induced to 

 borrow from Lord Clermont's ' Quadrupeds and Reptiles of Europe' 

 most of the foregoing details. 



It now becomes needful to explain what claim this beautiful lizard 

 may possess to a place in the British fauna. It is one thing to 

 enforce the acceptance of conclusions drawn by competent observers 

 because these observers were competent ones, and another to repeat 

 their statements because I know them to have been made in good 

 faith. The latter course I adopt, feeling that I have no right to call in 

 question the statements however I may hesitate about the conclusions 

 at which the several writers have arrived, and at the same time being 

 perfectly aware that it would be a fatal error to insist on the validity 

 of statements which we have now no means either of checking or of 

 controverting. The first instance I shall cite of a British green lizard 

 is most unfortunately Irish. " Lacertus viridis : The green lizard, 

 a colore ita dicitur : vulgari major est. In Italia frequentissi habentur. 

 Inveniuntur cliam in Hibernia. An Lacertus Hibernicus Mus, 

 Tradescanli.'" — Ray, Syn. p. 264. Mr. Thompson, in his ' Natural 

 History of Ireland,' vol. iv. p. 62, makes the following comment on 

 this passage. " Our common lizard being occasionally of a greenish 

 hue may possibly have led to the mistake, as persons have in several 

 instances told me that they knew a green lizard to be native, but this 

 always proved to be the common species." Mr. Thompson, I think, 

 somewhat too hastily pronounces Ray's statement " a mistake " : and 

 again, having had great personal experience of Irish lizards, I may 

 state very confidently I have never seen one to which Ray's words 

 would apply, " The Green Lizard, a colore ita dicitur." 



My next quotation is legitimately introduced : it was published in 

 that choicest of all choice natural histories, 'White's Selborne.' Here 

 it is : "I remember well to have seen formerly several beautiful green 

 Lacerti on the sunny sand-banks near Farnham, in Surrey, and Ray 

 admits there are such in Ireland." 



