NO EYES, AND MULTIPLE EYES 209 
which was supposed to have the faculty of 
assuming different shapes, and the power to 
foretell future events. He appears to have been 
very chary in exercising his gifts of prophecy, 
however, for we are told that only those who 
had sufficient courage to seize and hold him 
while he underwent his transformations in 
form could manage to make him speak. 
In addition to those creatures we have already 
mentioned, there are several kinds of reptiles 
that are unable to see. 
The curious legless lizards, known as amphis- 
bsenas, with one exception, have their eyes 
hidden underneath their skin. 
Worm-like in form as well as in habits, 
these reptiles dwell underground, excavating 
long and narrow tunnels in the earth, and 
feeding chiefly upon worms. Some of them, 
however, take up their abode in the nests of 
saiiba ants, and prey upon their hosts as well 
as upon their eggs. 
On the rare occasions when the lizards come 
to the surface, they progress by bending their 
bodies in vertical undulations, thereby differing 
from other limbless lizards which get along 
by lateral movement. They are further remark¬ 
able in the fact that they can move equally as 
well in a backward or forward direction when 
making their way through their subterranean 
o 
