Reptile Marks The habit grows rapidly of marking various animals
with a view to the further discovery of their migrations, whether wide or local. One school has lately been very active in affixing marks to the fins of salmon and sea-trout. A material has been discovered that enables bee specialists to mark large numbers of their bees for the sake of discovering how their jobs alter with their age. The former nursemaid develops, for example, into the caterer. The latest type of animal to suffer from this human curiosity is, it seems,-the reptile, both snake and lizard. Here the trouble is that the beast is apt to cast its skin and so lose its identification paper. Now the discovery has been made that the underpart of, for example, the common grass-snake and the lizard carries a pattern that is as infinitely various as the fingerprints of a man, and a photograph will assure identifica- tion. The discovery is not without scientific interest, apart from its possible help towards the tracing of some rather curious migrations, though the snake, of course, is no rival to the eel in this regard.
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