THE CROCODILE AND LITTLE RING-PLOVER. 141 



eighteen to twenty dozen. These eggs are a very nutritious 

 food, and are therefore eagerly sought after on this desert 

 coast by the Indians, and in the neighbourhood of the colony 

 also by the Whites." 



FRIENDSHIP OF THE CROCODILE AND LITTLE RING-PLOVER, 



( Charadrius JEgyptius, Hasselquist.) 

 [Translated from ' Description de l'Egypt, ' Hist. Nat. vol. i. p. 198.] 

 " < As the Crocodile feeds principally in the water, the inside 

 of his mouth is constantly infested with insects which suck his 

 blood' " (with leeches, sanguisugce, as it has been rendered by 

 preceding translators). " ' Every species of land acimals and of 

 birds avoids him ; the trochilus alone lives at peace with him, 

 because this little bird renders him a great service. When- 

 ever the crocodile comes up out of the water to go upon land, 

 and when he stretches out his half-opened mouth, (as he is in 

 the habit of doing, having turned towards the west wind,) 

 the trochilus creeps in, and devours all the insects which it 

 finds there. The crocodile, sensible of this advantage, does 

 him no injury.' — Herodotus, Book 2. § 68. 



" This passage is one of those which has particularly ex- 

 ercised the acuteness of commentators. Some of them have 

 regarded it as a mere fiction ; while others, in order to oppose 

 themselves with greater effect against so odious an imputa- 

 tion, have pushed their zeal so far as to imagine and to create 

 a new animal which could overreach the crocodile, and prove 

 itself capable of performing the different actions attributed to 

 the trochilus. But we shall shortly see that our historian 

 has been as unskilfully defended, as he has been unjustly at- 

 tacked. 



u Everything that depends upon the renewal of beings whom 

 we see appearing again and again, with the same conforma- 

 tions and the same habits, is connected with the eternal youth- 

 fulness of Nature. Now that which is contained in the above 

 passage, this compact agreed to between an enormous and 

 cruel-tempered animal and a little defenceless bird, this min- 

 gling of such different interests, these scenes of reciprocal 

 attachment, — all this is constantly and uniformly reproduced 

 from age to age : and indeed if these phenomena were ac- 

 tually noticed two or three thousand years ago by the priests 

 of Thebes and Memphis, I ought again to witness them. I 

 have again met with them unchanged in any one particular. 

 I also have had this interesting spectacle before my own eyes; 

 truly valuable details, which no one would know how to in- 

 vent and condense with an equal degree of conformity and 

 perfect simplicity. 



