LIZARDS. 
170 
Bronze Lizards. 
in medicine as an infallible remedy for almost every disease under the sun; its 
reputation as a healing agent still surviving among the Arabs, by whom the flesh 
of the creature is used both as a drug and as an article of food. The exclusive 
haunts of the skink are sandy districts, where it generally moves in a slow and 
deliberate manner, and when frightened buries itself in the soil instead of 
attempting to seek safety in flight. Indeed, the celerity with which the reptile 
sinks into the sand is described as being little short of marvellous, suggesting the 
idea of its escaping into some hole already existing rather than of excavating a 
fresh burrow for itself, such a burrow not unfrequently extending to the depth of 
several feet. During the daytime the skink, if quietly approached, may be 
observed quietly reposing in the sun by the side of one of the small hillocks or 
ridges raised in the sand at the base of trees by the wind; and from such a state 
of idleness it is only roused by the approach of a beetle or a fly, upon which it 
darts with unerring aim. In spite of its strong teeth or claws, when captured, the 
skink never makes any attempts to defend itself, beyond struggling vigorously. 
Of its breeding-habits, little or nothing definite appears to be known. According 
to Canon Tristram, the flesh of a few well-broiled skinks forms a dish not to be 
despised even by a European palate. 
Under the title of Chalkis, the ancient Greeks designated a 
remarkable snake-like lizard inhabiting Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily, 
as well as Algeria and Tunis, which was known to the Romans by the name 
of Seps ; the latter being in allusion to the poisonous properties with which 
this perfectly harmless reptile was supposed to be endowed. The “ seps ” 
(Chalcides tridactylus ) is the typical representative of a genus of some twelve 
species belonging to the present family, which exhibit a most interesting example 
of the gradual degradation of limbs, some species having five toes to each foot, 
while in others, as the figured example, the number of digits is reduced to three; 
and in one kind the limbs are represented merely by undivided rudiments. 
The bronze lizards, as the members of the genus may be collectively termed, 
belong to an assemblage of genera differing from all those already noticed in 
that the nostrils are pierced either in or close to the terminal rostral shield of 
the skull, instead of being more or less widely separated therefrom. In the case of 
the present genus the nostrils are situated in notches cut in the hinder border of 
the shield in question; while the body is greatly elongated, and the limbs are 
either short or rudimental. The figured kind is one of two species with three¬ 
toed limbs, and attains a length of 13^ inches, of which about half is occupied by 
the tail. In colour it is olive or bronzy above, and may be either uniform, or 
marked with an even number of darker and lighter longitudinal streaks. In the 
south of France, Spain, and Portugal, it is replaced by the smaller striped bronze 
lizard ( C . lineatus), in which the body is marked with nine or eleven longitudinal 
stripes. The range of the whole genus embraces Southern Europe, Northern Africa, 
and South-Western Asia, from Syria and Arabia to Sind. 
The three-toed bronze lizard much resembles the blind-worm in general 
o 
appearance and habits, frequenting damp places, where abundance of its favourite 
worms, snails, slugs, insects, and spiders are to be met with. Here it moves with a 
wriggling serpentine motion similar to that of the blind-worm, which it likewise 
