All animals fit into one of the following groups - mammals (our Saturday mole), amphibians (our Sunday seaplane), birds (our Monday missel thrush), insects (yesterday`s beetle women), and reptiles, which we are going to chat about today. There are just one other class, fish, but they are seldom garden wildlife, unless a salmon stream meanders through your lawn.
Our card today tells us the Latin names of both the creatures featured, so we can identify them much better as Lacerta Vivipara, or the common lizard, and Anguis Fragilis, or the common slow-worm.
The common lizard is now known as Zootoca Vivipara and not Lacerta. The Vivipara part means it gives birth to live young not eggs, though it does sometimes lay eggs. It feasts on insects, so is quite a good garden friend, though you will seldom see these in a garden, they much prefer cooler climates. In fact they have been found in the sub-arctic regions, and have the ability to freeze themselves and thaw out after the worst of the cold has passed.
The common slow-worm is not, as many think, a giant worm, it is a species all its own, a kind of missing link between the snake and the lizard, though technically a lizard in all ways but its missing legs. It is also known as a blindworm (for its tiny eyes), or a steelworm (for its colour). The "worm" part is actually a throwback to old English, where the word "wyrm" meant a serpent, and therefore came to mean a reptile too.
Stollwerck`s "Regne Animal" was a large set, made up of thirty-six different groups, each of which had six cards, covering a different group of animals, a hundred and ninety-six cards in all. We showed a card from group 5 as our Card of the Day for the 12th of November, 2024. It was first issued in Germany, then in France, and Holland (as "Dierenrijk") the cards of which seem to be much scarcer than the rest.
Series 33 covers reptiles (and amphibians), and the cards show :
- I - Le Crocodil le Nil (Nile crocodile)
- II - La Tortue d`Etang (pond turtle)
- III - Lezard et Orvet (lizard and slow-worm)
- IV - Vipere et Couleuvre a Collier (viper and grass snake)
- V - La Grenouille Vert et le Crapaud Commun (green frog and common toad)
- VI - Salamandre et Triton (salamander and newt)