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LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS* 



five places; and we at once perceive the propriety of one 

 of its Latin appellations, that of frag Ms" 



Science and ignorance agree, then, that the Slow-worm is 

 a Snake ; but science and ignorance are both mistaken, for 

 the creature is a Lizard. The assertion seems paradoxical, 

 when we think of the two pairs of well-developed limbs, 

 each armed with five jointed and clawed toes, that the 

 Lizard possesses, and of the way in which it uses them to 

 scamper away from our intrusion beneath the heath and 

 furze; but it is true that the slender, limbless, snake-like 

 Slow-worm is, in all the most important points of its ana- 

 tomy, a Saurian, and not a Serpent. Undoubtedly it is 

 one of the links by which these two very diverse forms are 

 bound together, and, like all such links, forms a most in- 

 teresting subject of study. The degeneration and gradual 

 disappearance of the limbs, in the progress of the various 

 genera that, like so many stepping-stones, bridge over the 

 wide passage from the Lizard to the Serpent, are pheno- 

 mena peculiarly worthy of observation ; and we cannot do 

 better, in bringing them before our readers, than to quote 

 the words of the eloquent historian of " British Reptiles," 

 in his account of this very Slow-worm : — 



" From the well-known family of the Scinks, or Scincidce, 

 with their true legs and five-toed feet, down to the present 

 species and its immediate congeners, every possible grada- 

 tion is to be found in the development of the anterior and 

 posterior extremities. Agreeing, as they ail do, in the 

 Saurian character of the structure of the head, the conso- 

 lidation of the bones of the cranium and jaws, and the 

 narrow and confined gape, so different from these parts in 

 the true Serpent, they yet approach the latter in the com- 



