LEGLESS LIZARDS 
THE SLOW-WORM AND THE AMPHISBANA 
This homely little creature will serve as a type of 
those numerous lizards which have deserted the straight 
road of reptilian development, and gone and lost their 
legs as if they were mere snakes. It is seldom that the 
Reptile House is without the slow-worm or blind-worm as 
it is usually called; it must be remembered that in 
terming it a worm nothing contemptuous or even 
wormy in the ordinary sense of the word is intended 
or implied ; the word worm is good Scandinavian for 
snake, and the name thus perpetrates a zoological 
error of a lesser kind. Why the worm under debate 
is not a snake is a question that many would find it 
hard toanswer. And why “ blind” is a further question 
much to the point. The blindness is here with the 
observer who first gave it the name and not with the 
lizard. It has good, even particularly good, eyes, sharp 
in their outlook, and provided, as are the eyes of nearly 
all lizards, with movable lids. Here, then, is the first 
reason why the Anguwis fagilis is not a snake; for no 
snake has eyelids. If the slow-worm be fed it will be 
noted that it eats in the usual lacertilian fashion, and 
does not divaricate its distensile jaws, getting outside 
its food as a snake does; in fact the two lower jaws 
where they meet are firmly united and not merely joined 
by a lax ligament as they are in all except a very few 
kinds of snakes. Other and satisfying reasons for 
placing the slow-worm among lizards can be seen only 
after an anatomical examination. Snake-like lizards 
have at least vestiges of limbs, which are completely 
wanting among snakes except the merest traces in 
some few forms, the boas and their immediate allies. 
No snake has a breast bone or sternum. These are 
some of the reasons—there are plenty of others—why 
the slow-worm is a lizard and not a snake. The slow- 
worm is perhaps the commonest of British reptiles. But 
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