NE of the most interesting rep- 
tilian forms we have’ in this coun- 
try is the famous “glass snake,’ a 
limbless species of lizard representative 
of the Anguidz, and long known scien- 
tifically under the name of Ophisaurus 
ventralis, the generic name being fre- 
quently given as Opheosaurus. It has 
rather a wide distribution in the United 
States, ranging from North Carolina 
to Florida in the East; westward to 
Nebraska; from thence northward 
through Illinois and Wisconsin, and 
southward into certain sections of 
northern Mexico. It is not altogether 
uncommon in many parts of Texas. 
As long ago as 1881, I carefully 
worked up the osteology of this reptile, 
making drawings of the skull and other 
parts of its skeleton, and reading the 
account at a regular meeting of the 
Biological Society of Washington on 
the 23d of December of that year. This 
was published in the Proceedings of 
the United States National Museum 
(1881), pp. 392-400, fig. 1-9). While 
the fact has long been known that this 
lizard possesses no external limbs, I 
demonstrated in my account of it that 
it had rudimentary femora articulat- 
ing with the pelvis, but no humeri to 
represent the pectoral limbs. 
During September, 1921, I received 
a beautiful living specimen of this liz- 
ard from a friend in Florida; it was 
in perfect condition, and the day fol- 
lowing its arrival I made three success- 
ful negatives of it, natural size, in 
slightly different poses, the best of 
which is here reproduced. To the best 
of my knowledge, up to this time no 
- good photograph of a living Ophisaurus 
has been published; even those given 
us by Ditmars in his “Reptile Book” 
are of spirit specimens. 
My specimen is at hand at this writ- 
ing; I find that it has a length of some 
19 centimeters, and is therefore not 
fully grown, as Mr. Ditmars tells us 
that in the Museum of Comparative 
Zoélogy at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
there is an alcoholic specimen which 

has a length of thirty-seven and a half 
inches, “it being considerably in ex- 
cess of the normal,” which he gives as 
twenty-seven inches. 
As to form, it is well shown in the 
cut; while in the matter of coloration, 
we find that it varies considerably in 
different specimens and at different 
ages. Occasionally the ground color is 
almost black on the dorsal surface of 
the body; oftener of an earth brown, 
but generally it is of an olive shade. 
Each scale is usually marked with a 
spot of a beautiful shade of green; 
these form lines in the cervical region, 
and are carried down the dorsum as 
stripes. Ventrally, the animal is of a 
pale greenish white of a very attractive 
shade. 
My living specimen I have had for 
about a fortnight, and when I first 
received him, I offered him, one at a 
time, live grasshoppers of medium size, 
which he snapped from my fingers in 
the most unceremonious manner. AS 
he seemed to relish them exceedingly, 
I have fed them to him ever since. He 
does not seem to drink any water, al- 
though he has been placed in a basin 
of it several times; on the other hand, 
he is kept in a moist mass of common 
earth in a commodious bowl. At no 
time has he attempted to bite me, 
though he has made rather vigorous 
endeavors to escape when picked up, 
but soon quiets down when handled 
with gentleness. His skin is wonder- 
fully smooth, and glossy as well as 
glassy. While his movements on the 
ground are, to some extent, serpentine 
and vigorous, he has not the agility 
seen in many of the smaller inoccuous 
serpents; neither can he coil and con- 
strict as do such species as the garter 
snake and others. 
This reptile sees its chief peculiarity 
in the fact that it is a wonderfully 
elongated lizard, with no vestige of ex- 
ternal limbs. That it has the power of 
dropping into from two to ten frag- 
ments upon being roughly handled, or 
upon receiving a sharp blow, is, to say 
Notes On the 
Glass Snake 
(Ophisaurus ventralis) 
By Dr. R. W. SHUFELDT, C.M.Z.S., Ete. 
Washington, D. C. 
the least, an exaggeration, readily fit- 
ting into the literature of zodlogical 
myths. At the best it can but part with 
its tail—or that part of its continuity 
which constitutes the post-anal part of 
its body. This it can do of its own 
volition, just as many of our ordinary 
lizards can, as for example our Swifts 
and others. The specimen at hand has 
lost its tail at some time or other, and 
it has been, as is always the case, re- 
placed by another and a shorter one of 
a uniform, dark brown color. The ver- 
tebre in this new tail are usually, if 
not always, of a cartilaginous struc- 
ture. How often this “tail-breaking” 
trick can happen I am not prepared to 
say, though I am inclined to believe 
that once will be found to be the rule. 
The ability to do it at all accounts for 
its chief vernacular name of “glass 
snake’; though, as already set forth, 
it is not a snake in any sense beyond 
the fact of its serpentine form. 
King snakes prey upon Ophisaurus 
and get away with a great many of 
them, as they are readily captured by 
that arch enemy of the ophidian race. 
The fact that our subject can so easily 
part with its tail as a means of escap- 
ing capture, in no way helps it when it 
falls a prey to the king snake, for that 
cannibal seizes him, head first, and 
works him into his gullet in that 
fashion, tail or no tail, which often 
breaks off toward the latter part of 
the swallowing. 
Ophisaurus has a blunt, semi-forked 
tongue, which it keeps sticking in and 
out in a fairly rapid manner, much as 
the Heloderma does. In nature it 
spends much of its time in burrowing, 
and has the same habit in captivity, if 
supplied with soft earth in its place of 
confinement. Ditmars states that “its 
food consists of earthworms, slugs, and 
the larve of insects. When prowling 
it sometimes ransacks the nest of some 
small bird that builds upon the ground, © 
and breaks the egg-shells with its 
strong jaws, and laps up the contents 
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