And in the words which Queen Margaret addresses to Richard.
"But thou
Mark'd by the destinies to be avoided,
As venom'd toads, or lizards' dreadful stings."
3rd part K. Henry VI. Act ii. Scene ii.
When a creature so harmless has been pourtrayed in aspects so repulsive, we may well exclaim, "O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look! "
I now pass on to another reptile, equally inoffensive and not less maligned, the blind-worm or slow-worm of Britain, described as " the eyeless venom'd worm" by Shakspeare. In Ireland it is unknown, but in Scotland I have seen it broken in two by the blow of a slight rod, thus illustrating the correctness of the Linnæan appellation, — Anguis fragilis. The "blind worm's sting" is enumerated among the materials employed by the witches " for a charm of powerful trouble," yet it has in fact no poison fangs, and is naturally of so timid and gentle a disposition, that only under circumstances of great provocation will it attempt to bite.
It is obvious, therefore, that in giving utterance to the erroneous ideas of his own times respecting the blind-worm, Shakspeare has inadvertently been instrumental in "filching from it its good name."
Perhaps he has afforded some compensation for the wrong by introducing it—though still as a forbidden thing—into the charmed lullaby which the fairy, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, sings at the behest of Titania.
"You spotted snakes, with double tongue,
Thorny hedge-hogs be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen."
To the systematic naturalist this creature becomes interesting, from considerations of a different kind. The body is destitute of legs, in that respect resembling the true serpents, while at the same time the jaws and cranium are consolidated, thus resembling those of the lizards. Both the saurian and the ophidian reptiles might therefore claim its allegiance, and it would seem to owe " here a divided duty."
But all difficulties vanish if we regard it not as tributary to either, but as a member of a connecting group, for which Mr. Gray has proposed the expressive appellation of Saurophidia.
Of the true serpents (Ophidia), we have had no representative in Ireland since that memorable traditionary epoch when St. Patrick
