Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/60

36 sudden darts alternated with periods of stillness, as though they well knew that in movement they were the more visible, and that quick movement was the least likely to be detected. The usual mode of escaping notice when approached slowly is to remain still, lying straight. If the danger be not pressing, the fins and tail are still moved a little, in the customary way; but on the threat of greater peril these members are held motionless; and in still greater danger even the movement of the gills in respiration is so restricted as hardly to be visible, even from the distance of a foot. These gradations of stillness are successively adopted even though the aggressor be but another Stickleback; and this especially occurs when a female fish is hoping to escape the notice of an approaching pugnacious male.

The Viviparous Lizard (Lacerta vivipara), wild or tame, has a similar appreciation of stillness, and of the advantage of rapid movement in retreat; and this reptile, like the fish, will refrain from breathing in order to escape detection. I have had perhaps hundreds of these reptiles in captivity, and have often crept up to them while they basked on their native banks, and watched their movements. The movement of the lungs in breathing is very apparent at the shoulders.

I have seen the feigning of death by two Ringed Snakes (Tropidonotus natrix) only out of a hundred or more handled. These were the only two I ever recaptured after liberation—one after a fortnight's liberty in the garden, and the other after nine months' freedom in his native haunt. These, on recapture, behaved in the same manner. The whole reptile became utterly limp; the tongue protruded, and the filaments at the end united (as they never are in life), and there was no hissing or apparent breathing. I never saw a Lizard feign death, nor any Batrachian.