Zoological Society. 309 



parent, through the wound which killed it. The young measured, 

 from the muzzle to anus, 1^^ inch ; thence to extremity of tail 1^^ 

 inch. These two specimens, displaying the contents of the abdomen 

 in situ, are now, with other specimens of both sexes, in the British 

 Museum. 



I afterwards found that this fact had not escaped the observation 

 of the indefatigable Robinson ; for, on consulting his manuscript vo- 

 lumes in Kingston, I met with the following notes, recorded nearly a 

 century ago : — " No author that I have met with has observed that 

 any animals of the Lizard-kind are viviparous ; yet I have by accident 

 discovered that the smooth Snake-lizard of Jamaica brings its young 

 forth alive. Mr. Long having caught one of these alive, tied it all 

 night upon a table with a thread, and in the morning found a young 

 one or two lying near the other, which was a full-grown one. Being 

 at a loss to account for this, as imagining that all the Lizard-kind 

 were oviparous, he called upon me to know my sentiments. It ap- 

 peared very plain to me that this animal was viviparous ; nor does 

 this seem strange to me, when I consider that some of the Serpent- 

 kind are also viviparous, viz. the Viper and Rattle-snake. 



" Some time in August 1760, as I was looking over a parcel of 

 preserved lizards, finding amongst the rest one of these Snake-lizards 

 full-grown, with the belly very much distended, in which state they 

 may be often seen, — 1 took my penknife, and endeavoured to cut the 

 abdomen open, but found it so well defended by a covering of very 

 small hard scales, like those of a fish, that my knife would not enter 

 till I had scraped them away, when opening the abdomen I found two 

 beautiful young ones, about two inches long." (Rob. MSS. iv. 47.) 



The stomach is a lengthened sac. In specimens that I examined 

 I found small cockroaches, fragments of crickets, &c., insects which 

 live in heaps of stones. In one specimen I observed a few slender, 

 rather short, intestinal thread-worms, loose among the abdominal 

 viscera. 



Sloane's ' Lacerta minor Isevis' (tab. 273. fig. 5) is certainly the 

 present species, and is not a bad representation. His description, 

 however, like most of his zoological notes, is full of confusion and 

 error. He says, "This is bigger than the former [which I think to 

 be the female of the Purple- tailed Anolis*], smooth, having a great 

 many brown spots, otherwise much the same [!], laying a very small, 

 white, hard- shelled egg (fig. 6) [which is however the egg of a com- 

 mon little Sphceriodactylus], nestling in rotten -holed trees [here he 

 confounds it with Gecko rapicauda], leaping from one bough to 

 another [here with the Anoles] ; 'tis very common among old pali- 

 sades, &c." It is very evident to me that Sloane's zoological notes 

 were but in a slight degree the result of his own observation ; he 

 trusted to the loose reports of negroes and others, generally correct 

 of something or other, but very often misapplied, the local names and 

 habits of widely different species being huddled and mingled together 

 in almost inextricable confusion. That fruitful source of error, the 

 application of the same names to different species in different (and 

 * I hope to describe this species in a future memoir. — P. H. G. 



