33 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and not our citizens pays our customs taxes on imports, what is the 

 object of placing by specific statutes any article on the free list? 

 Why not let him continue to pay millions of taxes for us, as, for 

 example, on sugar? 



OUR FLORIDA ALLIGATOR. 



By I. W. BLAKE. 



AN alligator is not an attractive creature. He has not a single 

 - virtue that can be named. He is cowardly, treacherous, hide- 

 ous. He is neither graceful nor even respectable in appearance. He 

 is not even amusing or grotesque in his ungainliness, for as a brute — 

 a brute unqualified — he is always so intensely real, that one shrinks 

 from him with loathing; and a laugh at his expense while in his 

 presence would seem curiously out of place. 



His personality, too, is strong. Once catch the steadfast gaze of 

 a free, adult alligator's wicked eyes, with their odd vertical pupils 

 fixed full upon your own, and the significance of the expression 

 " evil eye," and the mysteries of snake-charming, hypnotism, and hoo- 

 dooism will be readily understood, for his brutish, merciless, un- 

 flinching stare is simply blood-chilling. 



Zoologically the alligator belongs to the genus Crocodilus, and 

 he has all the hideousness of that family, lacking somewhat its 

 bloodthirstiness, although the American alligator is carnivorous by 

 nature, and occasionally cannibalistic. Strictly speaking, however, 

 the true alligator is much less dangerous than his relatives of the 

 Old World, and he is correspondingly less courageous. 



One would suppose the saurians, or crocodilians, from their gen- 

 eral appearance to be huge lizards, but the resemblance is super- 

 ficial. The whole internal structure differs widely, and, subdivided 



procity treaty, practically free trade between Canada and the United States in live stock, 

 wool, barley, rye, peas, oats, and other farm products, while subsequent to 1866, when 

 the reciprocity treaty had been repealed, duties were imposed on all these articles on their 

 import from Canada into the United States. During the first period Canadian horses, 

 for example, sold under free trade for shipment to the United States at from sixty-five 

 to eighty-five dollars each, while during the years next subsequent to 1866 the value of 

 the Canadian horses imported into the United States was returned at from ninety-two to one 

 hundred and four dollars each ; thus showing that the United States tariff did not force the 

 Canadian horse breeders to lower their prices in order to compensate American purchasers 

 for the duties exacted. And as regards the other products mentioned, the official data show 

 that in no case did the imposition of duties under the United States tariff reduce the prices 

 paid by American purchasers to the Canadian farmers foi their products. These are very 

 commonplace, very familiar, and very convincing facts which ought to sil?nee all this talk 

 about the foreign exporter or anybody else but the consumer paying the duty ; but it is not 

 at all probable that they will. 



