BLIND-WORM, the English name for a species of Reptile belonging to the family of Angui&r, Les Orvets of the French, and the genus Angels of Linnicus. It is also called in England Slow-Worm. The Blind-Worm (Anguis fragilis), is common throughout Europe. Its length varies from about 11 inches to somewhat more than a foot, and instances have been given of its attaining more than double that length. The eyes are small (whence one of its names), and the irides are red. The head is small, the teeth are minute and numerous, the neck is slender, and thence the body enlarges, continuing of equal bulk to the tip of the tail, which ends bluntly, and is as long as the trunk, or body part. The scales are very smooth, shining, of a silvered yellow on the upper parts, and dusky beneath ; the sides are of a somewhat reddish cast. Down the back extend three black lines, which change with age into different series of black specks, and at length disappear. The general colour of the back may be described as cinereous, with somewhat of a metallic lustre, and marked with very fine lines of minute black speck& The dusky belly and the reddish sides: are marked like the back.
The Blind-Wenn feeds en earth-worms, insects, &c.; and the slow ness of its motion has obtained for it another of its names. Though perfectly innocuous, it has the character of ]assessing the most deadly venom, and is persecuted accordingly. Pennant quotes Dr. Borlase av assisting this idle and groundless notion, by mentioning a variety of this serpent with a pointed tail, and adding that he had been informed that a man lost his life by the bite of one in Oxfordshire. New, if the serpent that bit the man in Oxfordshire had a pointed tail, it could not have been a blind-worm ; and if the story of the death be true, lie most probably loot his life by the bite of a black or dusky viper, as Pennant suggests. ['irm] The country people still hold this harmless reptile in utter abhorrence, and wage an exterminating war against it : but the reader may be assured that the blind-worm's sting' exists only in imagination. The animal is very brittle. Laureuti
and others assert that when captured it throws itself into such rigidity that it isometlines breaks in two. A smart blow with a switch divides it ; and from this fragility Linnnus gave it the specific name which it atilt retains. Cuvier is of opinion that the Angela eryr of Linnaeus is only a young blind-worm, which has the dorsal lines well marked, and that the Anguis cliricus, which Daudin makes an L'ryx, is nothing more than an old blind-worm with a truncated tail. The Blind-Worm, or Slew-Worm, of the old Engliali authors is the Long Cripple of the Cornish, according to Borlme ,Ormsla and Koppar-Orm of the 'Fauna Suethca,' L'Orvet of Lacepade, Blind Schleiche of the Germans, Anguis fragilis of Linnaeus. It brings forth its young alive, and it is said twice a year, in the seasons of spring and autumn.
The general opinion is (and we think it well founded) that the Blind-Worm is the Caeilia of the Latins, and the l;(pacetp and Tie/Weer of the ancient Greeks, names given in allusion to its supposed blind ness, and that it was sometimes called Kauptas on account of its assumed deafness. Belon considers it to be the serpent called Tephloti, Tephliti, and Tephlini by the modern Greeks. Colinnella (`De Re Rustica, 6. c. 17), following the opinion of its deleterious nature, says that its poison is fatal to oxen, and that the cure is the flesh of storks, because they devour this serpent. Upon the principle, we suppose, of counteracting one poison by the application of another, a Theriaca, or poison-antidote, made from the harmless Blind-Worms (areiliis)and the theriacal water was used as a sudorific against the pestilence. Mr. Bell says this creature is kept alive with difficulty in confinement. It feeds on worms, insects, slugs, &c. Its habits are exceedingly gentle and inoffensive, and even should it attempt to bite when irritated it is incapable of producing injury. (Bell, British Reptiles.)