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Show 1 9 0 5 .] AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES. 2 1 9 ground, basking on the fallen leaves, between which, and in the soft humus, they wriggle away with perplexing agility. A n e l y t r o p s id ^e, an artificial assembly of a few degraded Scincoids in Madagascar, Tropical Africa, and Anelytropsis papillosus in Mexico. Of this only the two type specimens, described by Cope, " from near Jalapa," were known, until I found another in the humus of a dense forest near Motzorongo, south of Cordoba. X a n t u s i id .e .-The range of Xantusia extends from the desert tracts of Nevada, California with its impressive Mojave desert, into Lower California. There is little doubt that some species of Xantusia will be found in the desert-like country between Chihuahua and New Mexico, which has all the characteristic features of the home of Xantusia, not the least being the Yucca - trees, the bunches of spiky leaves of which give them shelter. The only other Mexican, Lepidophyma flavomaculatum, ranges from Panama to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The few other members of the family are likewise Central American, and one is found in the Antilles. This little strictly American family shows consequently division into a Northern or Sonoran, and a Southern or Central American Antillean group. A n i e l l id .e , with Aniella pidchra in California, and A. texana, of which the only specimen known came from El Paso. A m p i i i s b -LNID.e .-The distribution of numerous Amphisbsenidse throughout Africa and several Mediterranean countries, as well as in South and Central America, Mexico, Lower California, Florida, and the Greater Antilles, seems to favour a former transatlantic connection. Curiously enough, Mexico possesses only one genus, but this is the most interesting of all:- Chirotes.-Discovered many years ago somewhere in Mexico, Chirotes s. Bipes canaliculatus remained almost mythical. Then Duges received a single specimen from near Tecpan in Southern Guerrero, which he named Hemichirotes tridactylus. Next, some twenty years ago, the creature was discovered in Lower California in considerable numbers, they are Copes Euchirotes bipoius. r myself found Chirotes at last on the banks of the Balsas Ri\ ei, in the centre of Guerrero. It lives there in the fields of allmial sand, well out of reach of possible floods. Our only chance ol getting these pink, worm-like creatures was the offering of rewards to the" Indians who were ploughing the fields of young Indian corn in the month of July. They live at a depth of at least one foot, burrowing little tunnels which lead a long way 111 an} direction in the moist sand, but in the drier parts collapse at once behind the digging animal. When kept in a tin with sand, they dug into it with their heads first and then with their mole-like hands. They never appeared 011 the surface. Like |
