Reptiles. 



8639 



require it to walk at all, but, nevertheless, Dr. Edrnondston has from a 

 distance observed it progressing by means of a series of awkward 

 hopping movements. The unfortunate prisoner lived for about ten 

 days, and then it was found that the shot had penetrated the lungs, 

 but no other injury could be found. It was fed chiefly upon small 

 birds, which it always swallowed whole, and it was very foud of fresh 

 fish, but salted or dried food of any kind was invariably rejected. 

 During the first few days it cast up no pellets, although it did so 

 abundantly afterwards, and it was always more ready t<5* take food in 

 the evening than at any other time. The question of the disinclination 

 of this species to stand upon level ground may be very easily decided 

 by those who have had the opportunity of observing the specimen 

 which was sent from this island some years ago, and which is still, I 

 believe, in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London. 



The snowy owl, or " kat-yogl " as it is here termed, is no favourite 

 with the inhabitants of Shetland, its presence being regarded by them 

 as productive of all kinds of evil both to man and beast. I shot one 

 on the 25th of February last, about two hundred yards from Halli- 

 garth, and I heard an old servant remark, in reference to the event, 

 * Well, what business had it about this house ? ill thrift be till it ! " 

 It may serve to prevent some disappointment if I here warn visitors 

 against being misled at any time by the statement that a " kat-yogl" 

 has been seen in the neighbourhood, that term being applied indis- 

 criminately to owls of all kinds, including the shorteared species which 

 is not unfrequently met with upon the hills in autumn. 



Henry L. Saxby. 



Baltasound, Shetland, 

 May 8, 1863. 



Claim for Lacerta viridis to be admitted as a British Species* — The specimen 

 now exhibited was caught by a labouring man on a bank by the side of the road 

 a little way out of Dorking, on the road to Reigate, on Friday, April 3rd, 1803, and 

 brought to me the same evening, when I purchased it for the Museum of the Holmes- 

 dale Natural History Club. This species, which is frequent in the islands of Jersey 

 and Guernsey, and also in the South of Europe, has not been previously known to 

 naturalists as an inhabitant of England, and is not included by Professsor Bell in his 

 valuable work on the ' British Reptiles/ although he alludes to it as having been sup- 

 posed to occur both in England and Ireland, but gives it as his opinion that green 



* Read before the Holmesdale Natural History Club, at Reigate, on Friday 

 evening, April 24, 1863, when the specimen alluded to was exhibited. 



