564 LACERTAE CHAP. 



stealthily. They disappear on the slightest alarm, almost 

 swimming, as it were, with great agility through the prickly 

 cover, and then hiding and wriggling through the loose sand 

 between the roots. 



The following five " families " are composed of degraded 

 forms of various descent. Most of them lead a burrowing, 

 subterranean life, in adaptation to which the body has become 

 snake-shaped or worm-like. The fore-limbs are entirely absent, 

 except in Chirotes ; the hind-limbs are absent, or reduced to 

 small flaps ; the girdles are reduced correspondingly. The skull 

 is devoid of postorbital, postfronto-squamosal, supratemporal, and 

 jugal arches. The quadrate bone is mostly immovable. The 

 eyes and ears are concealed, except in the Pygopodidae. 



Fam. 14. Anelytropidae. — An artificial assembly of a few 

 degraded Scincoids. The worm-shaped, limbless body is devoid 

 of osteoderms. The tongue is short, slightly nicked anteriorly, 

 and covered with imbricating papillae. Columellae cranii are 

 present. AnelytrojJsis papillosus in Mexico. Typhlosaurus and 

 Feylinia in South and West Africa. 



Fam. 15. Dibamidae, consisting of the genus Dibamus, with 

 D. novae-guineae, in ISTew Guinea, the Moluccas, Celebes, and the 

 Nicobar Islands. The tongue is arrow-shaped, undivided in 

 front, covered with curved papillae. Columellae cranii are 

 absent. The vermiform body is covered with cycloid imbricating 

 scales without osteoderms. The limbs and even their arches 

 are absent, but in the males the hind-limbs are represented by a 

 pair of flaps. Total length of the animal about 6 inches. 



Fam. 16. Aniellidae. — The genus Amelia comprises a few 

 small worm- or snake-shaped species in California, which seem to 

 be degraded forms of Anguidae. The eyes and ears are con- 

 cealed, limbs are entirely absent, the body and tail are covered 

 with soft, imbricating, more or less hexagonal scales. The tongue 

 is villose, smooth, and bifid anteriorly. The teeth are relatively 

 large, few in numbers, recurved, with short swollen bases. The 

 skull, by reduction, approaches the Ophidian type;; there is no 

 columella cranii, the postorbital arch is ligamentous, the pre- 

 maxillary is single, the nasals and frontals remain separate, the 

 pre- and post-orbitals are in contact with each other, excluding 

 the frontal from^the orbit. 



A. pulchra. — Silvery, the scales edged with brown ; back and 



