36 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



sudden darts alternated with periods of stillness, as though they 

 well knew that in movement they were the more visible, and that 

 quick movement was the least likely to be detected. The usual 

 mode of escaping notice when approached slowly is to remain 

 still, lying straight. If the danger be not pressing, the fins and 

 tail are still moved a little, in the customary way ; but on the 

 threat of greater peril these members are held motionless ; and 

 in still greater danger even the movement of the gills in respira- 

 tion is so restricted as hardly to be visible, even from the distance 

 of a foot. These gradations of stillness are successively adopted 

 even though the aggressor be but another Stickleback ; and this 

 especially occurs when a female fish is hoping to escape the notice 

 of an approaching pugnacious male. 



The Viviparous Lizard (Lacerta vivipara), wild or tame, has a 

 similar appreciation of stillness, and of the advantage of rapid 

 movement in retreat ; and this reptile, like the fish, will refrain 

 from breathing in order to escape detection. I have had perhaps 

 hundreds of these reptiles in captivity, and have often crept up 

 to them while they basked on their native banks, and watched 

 their movements. The movement of the lungs in breathing is 

 very apparent at the shoulders. 



I have seen the feigning of death by two Ringed Snakes (Tropl- 

 donotus natrix) only out of a hundred or more handled. These 

 were the only two I ever recaptured after liberation — one after a 

 fortnight's liberty in the garden, and the other after nine months' 

 freedom in his native haunt. These, on recapture, behaved in 

 the same manner. The whole reptile became utterly limp ; the 

 tongue protruded, and the filaments at the end united (as they 

 never are in life), and there was no hissing or apparent breathing. 

 I never saw a Lizard feign death, nor any Batrachian. 



