1628 The Zoologist— April, 1869. 



A great deal of discussion has taken place in the daily and weekly 

 papers on the subject of lizards receiving into their stomach as a place 

 of refuge, their young ones when threatened with or fearing injury : 

 the majority of the readers and writers in such journals are not 

 naturalists — they know neither "what to observe" or "how to observe," 

 and consequently their statements and arguments melt into thin air 

 before the cross-examination which the mind of a naturalist is sure to 

 bestow on them : nevertheless, the discussion has not been confined 

 to non-naturalists, and excellent remarks have been made by natu- 

 ralists — remarks well worthy of being transferred to these pages, but 

 which I cannot readily so transfer on account of their obvious relation 

 to other remarks which fall under the category of aberrant. The 

 somewhat dogmatical character of a naturalist's mind has a tendency 

 to pooh-pooh the statements in question ; such is my own disposition : 

 I don't know how to believe that a young and lender animal can re- 

 main iu the strongly digestive stomach of a reptile and receive no 

 injury ; neither can I imagine what kind of instinct can teach the 

 young of any animal to seek so dangerous a haven. But I wish my 

 readers to peruse the following statements : — First, my late lamented 

 friend, William Christy, jun., found a fine specimen of the com- 

 mon lizard, with two young ones ; taking an interest in every 

 thing relating to natural history, he put them into a small pocket 

 vasculum or botany-box to bring home ; but when he next opened 

 the vasculuu), the young ones had disappeared and the belly of the 

 parent was greatly distended ; he concluded she had devoured her 

 own offspring : at night the vasculum was laid on a table, and the 

 lizard was therefore at rest ; in the morning the young ones had re- 

 appeared, and the mother was as lean as at first. Secondly, Mr. Henry 

 Doubleday, of Epping, supplies the following information: a person, 

 whose name is English, a good observer, and one as it were brought 

 up at the feet of a Natural-History Gamaliel, once happened to set 

 his foot on a common lizard in Epping Forest, and while the lizard 

 was thus held down by his foot, he distinctly saw three young ones 

 run out of her mouth ; struck by such a phenomenon he killed and 

 opened the old one, and found two other young ones iu her stomach, 

 which had been injured when he trod on her. In both these instances 

 the narrators are of that class who do know "what to observe" and 

 "how to observe" it; and the facts, whatever explanation they may 

 admit, are not to be dismissed as the result of imagination or mistaken 

 ■ol>servation. 



