A MPHI SB sE NA S. 
I S7 
the Tropic of Cancer, although also occurring in the West Indies, while Africa 
possesses over twenty species, and four are found in the Mediterranean area. Of 
their habits, Mr. Boulenger observes that all the members of this family are 
burrowers, and may live in ants’ nests. They bore narrow galleries in the earth, 
in which they are able to progress backwards as well as forwards. On the ground 
they progress in a straight line by slight vertical undulations, not by lateral 
movements, as in other limbless reptiles; and the tail of many species appears to 
be more or less prehensile. The food of these lizards consists of small insects and 
worms. As regards their breeding-habits, it is only known that one species lays 
eggs, which are deposited in ants’ nests. The marked resemblance of these lizards 
to earth-worms is a most curious instance of the similarity produced in the external 
HANDED AMPHISBJENA (liat. size). 
form of different groups of animals by adaptation to similar modes of life; the 
remarkable feature in this case being the occurrence of this resemblance in 
creatures so widely sundered from one another, as are worms and amphisbsenas. 
Fossil members of the family have been discovered in the Tertiary rocks of North 
America. 
Handed The one member of the family which exhibits evidence of its 
AmpMstama. relationship to less specialised lizards in the retention of rudimentary 
fore-limbs is the handed amphisbsena (Chirotes caniculatus), of Mexico and 
California; this being one of the two species found on the continent of America to 
the north of the Tropic of Cancer. This creature, which attains a length of about 
7 inches, and is of a brownish flesh-colour, is distinguished by the presence of 
a pair of small depressed fore-limbs, placed close to the head, to which they are 
about equal in length; each of these being provided with four well-developed and 
clawed toes, of which the outermost is the shortest. 
