My own observations do not support the idea that brooding by the female serves to hasten the development of the eggs. Both in the laboratory and in natural nests, clutches deserted by disturbed females hatched and the hatching was not unduly delayed. In the field, females were never observed to bask in the sun beside their nest burrows, and seemingly left them infrequently even to feed. When a female was caught in her nest burrow, her temperature nearly always approximated that of the surrounding earth with which she was in contact. The temperature in each nest depends primarily upon its situation. When the immediate vicinity of the nest receives direct sunlight, the eggs are warmed without the aid of the female, but when there is no sunlight the temperature is much lower. In order to maintain an appreciably higher nest temperature the female would have to make frequent trips to spots perhaps several feet or several yards away to find sunlight. Upon returning to the nest, her body heat would be quickly dissipated into the eggs and the surrounding damp soil. She would need to shuttle back and forth almost continually between the nest and a spot exposed to sunshine. Cloudy weather often preventing the warming of the eggs by absorption of solar heat prevails during much of the incubation season, in the region of the present study, and probably to an even greater extent throughout the range as a whole. Noble and Mason state (_op. cit._:9) that while in some non-brooding kinds of lizards the eggs are actually damaged by turning, the female _fasciatus_ frequently turns her eggs and moves the whole clutch about in the nest cavity. On returning to their nests the experimental females each invariably touched one or more eggs with their tongues as an olfactory test. Eggs of other kinds of lizards not of the genus _Eumeces_, and shellacked eggs of _fasciatus_, or paraffin models of them, ordinarily were discarded immediately after a single touch of the tongue. Eggs of other individuals of the species, and even the eggs of _Eumeces laticeps_ were accepted as part of the brood. Any of the experimental females would quickly retrieve one of her eggs moved a short distance outside the nest cavity. Even if the whole clutch of eggs were scattered about, the female would, over a period of hours, gather the eggs and return them to the nest cavity. This movement of the eggs is accomplished by rolling or pushing them in a loop of the body or tail, or, less frequently, by grasping an egg in the jaws, lifting it, and gently placing it in a new position. Even if the females were blindfolded, they were still able to retrieve scattered eggs, but one in which the tongue tip was experimentally removed showed no further interest in its eggs, presumably having lost the capacity to recognize them by olfactory test.