2306 Reptiles. 



road, I saw a viper lying on the parapet ; she had apparently just been killed by a blow 

 from a stick : five or six young ones, about four inches long, were wriggling about 

 their murdered parent, and one was making its way out of her mouth at the time when 

 I approached. Whether this was the first time that the young ones had seen the light, 

 or whether they were only leaving a place of temporary refuge, I leave to more expe- 

 rienced observers than myself to determine. — E. F. Percival; 64, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 

 October 17, 1848. 



On the Habits of Ameiva dorsalis, a Jamaica Lizard. — " This species is one of the * 

 most common of the reptiles of Jamaica, and is as beautiful as abundant. Its colours 

 are striking, but not showy ; its countenance has a very meek expression, not altogether 

 unlike that of a deer or antelope. All its motions are elegant and sprightly : when it 

 is proceeding deliberately, its body is thrown into lateral curves the most graceful ima- 

 ginable ; but when alarmed, its swiftness is so excessive that it appears as if it lite- 

 rally flew over the ground, and the observer can scarcely persuade himself that it is 

 not a bird. 



" The ground lizard (as it is provincially termed) is generally diffused, as far as 

 my knowledge of the island extends, but chiefly affects sandy places. Near the sea- 

 side it is particularly abundant, beneath the shore-grasses, nickers, and black-withes 

 that form an almost impenetrable belt of thicket a few yards above high-water mark. 

 Here the dry leaves and twigs are rustled all day long by the fleet-footed Ameiva, as 

 it shoots hither and thither among them, or walks at leisure, picking up little atoms of 

 food. Though excessively timid, so that it is almost impossible to approach them, I 

 have found that by sitting down in their haunts, and remaining for some time per- 

 fectly still, one and another will come forth from their coverts and pursue their avoca- 

 tions without fear. They pick among the sand exactly in the manner of a bird, and 

 scratch it away with the long and flexible fore-feet, using them alternately as the 

 common fowl does, now and then stopping and raising the hind-foot to scratch the 

 head. 



" I am told (and have no doubt of the fact) that it digs for itself the burrow in 

 which it resides. It is accused too of digging still deeper, to get at the seed-corn when 

 just sprouting, and of eating the germinating grain to such an extent as to be mis- 

 chievous. Of such as I dissected, however, I found the food to consist principally of 

 insects. Thus on one occasion the stomach was occupied with a whole cockroach, and 

 the intestines were filled with fragments of another. In the stomach of one shot in 

 November I found many dipterous maggots, fragments of beetles, and one or two 

 seeds of berries. A third contained cockroaches, a caterpillar, some maggots and 

 small beetles. 



" On one or two occasions, as when one has been suddenly alarmed, I have noticed 

 a singular action in this animal, which then carries its body the whole height of the 

 legs above the ground, and runs as it were on tiptoe in a very ludicrous manner. 



" While speaking of its progression, I may observe, that though the toes are not 

 formed like those of the Geckos and Anoles, for holding on against gravity, I have seen 

 a large Ameiva run with facility on the side of a dry wall, along the perpendicular 

 surfaces of the large stones." — P. H. Gosse, in ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society,' 

 No. 181, p. 24. 



The Great Sca-Serpent. — I beg to send you the following extract from my journal. 

 " H.M.S. Daedalus, August 6, 1848, lat. 25° S., long. 9° 37' R., St. Helena 1015 

 miles. In the 4 to <> watch, at about 5 o'clock, we observed a most remarkable fish 



