210 THE HERPETOLOGY OF CUBA. 



the American Hydrographic Office. The west shore is a dreary waste, low, 

 sandy, and insect-ridden. The long white beach with its scrubby zone, behind 

 tide-reach, of spindly palms, beach grape, and Ipomoea was broken by an occa- 

 sional estero or salt-water inlet, muddy and fringed with a true forest of giant 

 mangroves. Inland were mile-long stretches of baked clay, dazzUng white 

 and sizzhng under a burning sun. These vast level stretches fill up daring the 

 summer rains, el tiempo de las aguas, as the Cubans say, and then evaporate 

 and dry and crack during the rest of the year. Near the south coast the heavy 

 winds blow salt water up into some of the fiat pans, and a more or less haphazard 

 harvesting of salt is carried on. The whole region should be a tj^pical home 

 for Crocodylus acutus but it is not; C. rhombifer is abundant, in spite of Gund- 

 lach, even in the very shore mangroves themselves. We not only never even 

 saw an acutus but the natives all knew of the curious fact of its absence. E\'i- 

 dently the habits which Gundlach noted in captivity obtain under wild condi- 

 tions and the common acutus, so widespread and at first sight apparently a 

 distinctly dominant type seems unable to compete with rhombifer. 



The question least easy to answer is why should not rhombifer be extending 

 its range instead of the reverse. It is probably really a fresh-water loving 

 form which has only adapted itself to hfe in salt water at this one locality and 

 it is possible that this test or trial is but a transitory one or a recent manoeuvre. 

 De la Torre has often told us of the abundance of crocodile remains in the 

 Casimba de Jatibonico and in the deposits of fossils at the Banos de Ciego 

 Montero. Photographs of a fossil skull, due to the kindness of Dr. W. D. 

 Matthew, show that these early crococUles are identical with the existing 

 rhombifer. Dr. Matthew kindly allows me to mention this fact here. The 

 sloth bones recovered by de la Torre and the American Museum party under 

 Mr. Barnum Brown were often pitted with crocodile tooth marks. Evidently 

 when these deposits were laid down the Cienaga condition was widespread over 

 the central portion of Cuba and the unwary sloth was dragged to this death 

 by the formerly widespread C. rhombifer. Either the crocodiles dragged their 

 prey into the pockets, then submerged, which have now emerged into accessi- 

 biUty or with the rising of the land the bones accumulated into the natural 

 receptacles by washing; this is very unlikely and the abundant associated 

 crocodile bones argue for the previous suggestion. Naturalists await with 

 impatience the appearance of the report by de la Torre and Matthew upon 

 these extraordinary finds. 



