THREE COMMON REPTILES 



throws off its tail. I mean what I say quite 

 literally, for the reptile has the power, by a 

 sudden contraction of certain muscles, of 

 breaking off its own tail. The severed part 

 begins at once a weird dance, writhing and 

 kicking on the ground. Of course it is merely 

 muscular contractions, such as keep an eel 

 wriggling long after it is really dead. Never- 

 theless the broken-off tail will move for some 

 minutes after it has parted from its owner, 

 and on being touched will respond with further 

 kicks. Even after five or ten minutes, life of 

 a sort has not quite fled. In one instance a 

 severed tail had still a wriggle left in it at the 

 end of half an hour. In this case I was walking 

 across a meadow when my attention was 

 drawn to what at first glimpse I took to be a 

 small snake dancing in the grass, but which 

 a second look showed me to be the tail of a 

 slowworm with which its owner had parted. 

 The slowworm itself was nowhere to be seen, 

 but a kestrel's feather lying on the ground a 

 little way off suggested a clue to the mystery. 

 Probably the hawk had been hovering high 

 overhead, watching for any unwary mouse 

 which might come out to feed, when it had seen 

 the lizard glide out to sun itself. Now sJlow- 



248 



