296 
LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS. 
five places; and we at ouce perceive the propriety of one 
of its Latin appellations, that of “ fragilis 
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 Eeptiles,” 
in his account of this very Slow-worm : — 
“ Fi ' om tllc 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 he found in the development of the anterior and 
posterior extremities. Agreeing, as they all 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- 
