1905. | AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES. 219 
ground, basking on the fallen leaves, between which, and in the 
soft humus, they wriggle away with perplexing agility. 
ANELYTROPSIDA, an artificial assembly of a few degraded 
Scincoids in Madagascar, Tropical Africa, and <Anelytropsis 
papillosus in Mexico. Of this only the two type specimens, 
described by Cope, “ from near Jalapa,” were known, until I found 
another in the humus of a dense forest near Motzorongo, south of 
Cordoba. 
XantustD#.—The range of Xantusia extends from the desert 
tracts of Nevada, California with its impressive Mojave desert, 
into Lower California. There is little doubt that some species 
of Xantusia will be found in the desert-like country between 
Chihuahua and New Mexico, which has all the characteristic 
features of the home of Yantuwsia, not the least being the Yucca- 
trees, the bunches of spiky leaves of which give them shelter. 
The only other Mexican, Lepidophyma flavomaculatum, ranges 
from Panama to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The few other 
members of the family are likewise Central American, and one is 
found in the Antilles. This little strictly American family shows 
consequently division into a Northern or Sonoran, and a Southern 
or Central American Antillean group. 
ANIELLID#, with Aniella pubchra in California, and A. texana, 
of which the only specimen known came from El Paso. 
AMPHISBENIDH.—The distribution of numerous Amphisbeenidee 
throughout Africa and several Mediterranean countries, as well as 
in South and Central America, Mexico, Lower California, Florida, 
and the Greater Antilles, seems to favour a former transatlantic 
connection. 
Curiously enough, Mexico possesses only one genus, but this is 
the most interesting of all :— 
Chirotes.—Discovered many years ago somewhere in Mexico, 
Chirotes s. Bipes canaliculatus remained almost mythical. Then 
Dugés received a single specimen from near Tecpan in Southern 
Guerrero, which he named Hemichirotes tridactylus. Next, some 
twenty years ago, the creature was discovered in Lower California 
in considerable numbers, they are Cope’s Huchirotes biporus. IL 
myself found Chirotes at last on the banks of the Balsas River, in 
the centre of Guerrero. It lives there in the fields of alluvial 
sand, well out of reach of possible floods. Our only chance of 
getting these pink, worm-like creatures was the offering of rewards 
to the Indians who were ploughing the fields of young Indian 
corn in the month of July. They live at a depth of at least one 
foot, burrowing little tunnels which lead a long way in any 
direction in the moist sand, but in the drier parts collapse at 
once behind the digging animal. When kept in a tin with 
sand, they dug into it with their heads first and then with their 
mole-like hands. They never appeared on the surface. Like 
