The body is elongated, naked, and furnished with a tail and four equal legs.

THE CROCODILE*.

The Crocodile is an animal perhaps too com. monly found near the large rivers in various parts both of Asia and Africa, where it attains the amazing length of twenty-five feet and upwards. The armour, with which the upper part of the body is coated, may be accounted among the most elaborate pieces of Nature's mechanism. In the fullgrown animal it is so strong as easily to repel a musket ball on the lower part it is much thinner and more pliable. The whole animal appears as if covered with the most regular and curious carved work. The colour of the full-grown Crocodile is blackish-brown above, and yellowish-white beneath. The upper parts of the legs and sides are varied with deep yellow, and in some parts tinged with green. The eyes are provided with a winking membrane, as in the bird tribes. The mouth is of vast width, and furnished with numerous sharppointed teeth, thirty or more on each side of the jaws; and these are so disposed as, when the mouth is closed, to fit alternately above and below.

The Crocodile and Alligator have the largest

* SYNONYMS.-Lacerta Crocodilus. Linn.-Le Crocodile proprement dit. La Cepede.-Cayman. Bosman.-Nilotic Crocodile. Common Crocodile. Shaw.Shaw's Gen. Zool. vol. iii. tab. 55, .56, 57.

mouths of almost any animals. It has been asserted, by various writers, that both their jaws are moveable. A single glance, however, at their skeleton will afford sufficient proof that the upper jaw is fixed, and that the motion is altogether confined to the under jaw. They are also generally believed to have no tongue: this again is an error, for the tongue in both species is larger than even that of the Ox; but it is so connected with the sides of the lower jaw as to be incapable of being stretched far forwards, as in other animals.

Except when pressed by hunger, or with a view of depositing its eggs, this enormous creature seldom leaves the water. Its usual method is to float along upon the surface, and seize whatever animals come within its reach; but, when this me thod fails, it then goes closer to the bank. There it waits in patient expectation of some land animal that may come to drink; the dog, the bull, the tiger, or man himself. Nothing is to be seen on the approach, nor is its retreat discovered till it is too late for safety. It seizes the victim with a spring, and goes at a bound much farther than such an unwieldy animal could be supposed to do. Then having secured the prey, it drags it into the water, instantly sinks with it to the bottom, and in this manner quickly drowns it. Sometimes it happens that the creature wounded by the Crocodile makes its escape; in which case, the latter pursues with some celerity, and often takes it a second time. He seldom moves far from rivers, except in covert and marshy places; so that, in many parts of the

East, it is very dangerous to walk carelessly on the banks of unknown rivers, or among sedgy grounds; and still more so to bathe, without the utmost circumspection, in unfrequented places. The Crocodile seldom pursues his prey far on shore; and although his pace is tolerably rapid in a direct line, yet he is not sufficiently swift to overtake an active man who preserves his presence of mind.

All the rivers of Guinea are pestered with vast shoals of Crocodiles. On very hot days, great numbers of them lie basking on the banks of rivers, and as soon as they observe any one approach their place they plunge into the water with great violence.

Bosman says, very quaintly, "As for their cry"ing and subtleties to catch men, I believe them as "much as the Jews do the Gospel *.”

They are excessively voracious, and swallow all their food whole; for their mouth is neither furnished with grinding teeth, nor bave the jaws any lateral motion. They are said to swallow stones to aid digestion, in the manner of the seed-eating birds; and they are able to sustain abstinence for many weeks together.

The young are produced from eggs deposited in the sand, and hatched by the heat of the sun, near the bank of some river or lake. The female is said to be extremely cautious in depositing them unobserved. The general number is from eighty to a hundred. They are not larger than those of a Goose, and are covered with a tough white skin.

VOL. III.

* Bosman's Guinea, 239.
E

She fills up the hole carefully before she leaves them. In each of the two succeeding days she lays as many more, which she hides in the same manner. The eggs are hatched generally in about thirty days, when the young immediately run into the water. These young are devoured by various kinds of fish, and their numbers are also lessened by supplying food to their own species. It is however in the destruction of their eggs that the most material service is effected. The Ichneumon * and the Vultures, which in the hot climates collect in immense numbers, scem peculiarly appointed by Providence to abridge their enormous fecundity, and in this capacity devour and destroy millions of the eggs.

Crocodiles are frequently seen about the rivers in Java in great numbers. The Javanese sometimes catch them with a hook and line; a circumstance that at first would seem almost incredible, since they are able, with great ease, to bite asunder the strongest rope. These people therefore use a very loosely twisted cord of cotton, at the end of which a hook is fastened, baited with raw flesh. When the Crocodile, after having swallowed the hook, endeavours to bite the cord asunder, his teeth only separate the fibres, and all his attempts are of no avail. When he is found to be fastened, his antagonists come upon him in great numbers, and, with the weapons they have for the purpose, soon destroy himt.-In other parts of the world these ani

* Viverra Ichneumon of Linnæus.

Thunberg, ii. 290. 6

mals are hunted by means of strong dogs properly trained, and armed with spiked collars.

The natives of Siam take Crocodiles by placing three or four strong nets across a river, at proper distances from each other; so that, if the animal breaks through the first, he may be caught in some of the others. When he finds himself fastened, he lashes every thing around him with great violence with his enormous tail. After he has struggled some time and is become exhausted, the men approach in boats, and pierce him in the most tender parts of his body with spears.

Labat assures us, (but whether his assertion is to be trusted or not I cannot say,) that a negro armed only with a knife in his right hand, and having his left wrapped round with thick leather, will venture boldly to attack the Crocodile in his own element. As soon as he observes his enemy near, the man puts out his left arm, which the beast immediately seizes in its mouth. He then gives it several stabs below the chin, where the skin is very tender; and the water coming in at the mouth, thus involuntarily held open, the creature is soon destroyed.

The Crocodile, from its immense size and voracious habits, is certainly an object of fear; and, by no very uncommon transition of sentiment, has also gradually become an object of veneration; and, offerings are in some countries made to it as to a deity. The inhabitants of Java, when attacked by disease, will sometimes build a kind of coop, and fill it with such eatables as they think most agrec