1622 The Zoologist— April, 1869. 



1863, Mr. J. A. Brewer, the secretary of the Hohnesdale Natural 

 History Club, exhibited the lizard at a meeting of that Club, and read 

 the following paper respecting its capture and on the general character 

 of its claim to be regarded as British : — 



" The specimen now exhibited was caught by a labouring man on 

 a bank by the side of the road, a little way out of Dorking on the 

 road to Reigate, on Friday, April 3rd, 1863, and brought to me 

 the same evening, when I purchased it for the Museum of the Holmes- 

 dale Natural History Club. This species, which is frequent in the 

 islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and also in the South of Europe, has 

 uot been previously known to naturalists as an inhabitant of England, 

 and is not included by Professer Bell in his valuable work on the 

 British Reptiles, although he alludes to it as having been supposed to 

 occur both in England and Ireland ; but gives it as his opinion that 

 green varieties of a much smaller species, Lacerta agilis, have been 

 mistaken for it. The occurrence of this solitary specimen is not 

 sufficient in itself to establish it as a British species ; but on showing 

 it, a few days since, to Mr. John E. Daniel, a well-known naturalist, 

 and who certainly would not have been likely to mistake this beau- 

 tiful species, he informed me that a few years since he had observed 

 three or four specimens of it on the heath about half a mile south of 

 Wareham, in Dorsetshire, one of which he captured, and is quite 

 certain of its identity with Lacerta viridis, a species which he is well 

 acquainted with, having frequently seen it in Germany, and received 

 specimens from the Channel Islands. The proof, therefore, of its 

 occurrence in England is established ; whether indigenous or as a 

 naturalized species, remaining doubtful ; but there can be now no 

 reason why it should not be added to the British fauna." — J. A. Brewery 

 in the 'Zoologist^ p. 8639. 



Lastly, the Rev. J. G. Wood, in his ' Illustrated Natural History,' 

 says — " I know of one instance where the true Lacerta viridis was 

 captured and killed near Oxford, but I believe that it must have been 

 a wanderer from one of the numerous fern-cases that are to be seen in 

 so many houses." 



The Sand Lizard {Lacerta Stirpium). 

 Lacerta agilis y dorso punctis albis duplici serie. Linneus, Faun. 



Suec., p. 289. 

 Lacerta agilis. Bonap. Faun. Ital. (with a figure) ; Bell, British 



Reptiles, p. 18 (with a figure). 



