A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



quietly rounded a projecting thicket of mangrove-roots, I saw the 

 great reptile lying close before me on a sandbank, a grey, warty, 

 antediluvian apparition, its huge head pointing towards the land. 

 It seemed asleep, and only when one of the men fired did it throw 

 up its head, turn its massive body, and disappear into the stream, 

 just in front of the canoe. 



The incautious behaviour of the caiman surprised me, for in 

 Ceylon I never came upon a crocodile which was not lying with 

 its head towards the water, so that it could disappear immediately 

 on the approach of a human being. The great armoured lizards 

 have long been hunted creatures; wherever there are human 

 inhabitants they are rare, and they survive only by living in 

 concealment and observing the greatest caution. 



Many people may consider that the extermination of a creature 

 which is dangerous to man cannot be productive of harm. But 

 such people think too lightly of the powers of the Creator ; as though 

 He would create any creature that did not fill its appointed place 

 and adapt itself as a living member of the whole great community 

 of plants and animals, so that it cannot with impunity be blotted 

 out of this harmony without harmful consequences ! Already 

 observers in the southern States of North America report that with 

 the progressive disappearance of the alligator the rats and poisonous 

 snakes have increased in numbers, and are much more unpleasantly 

 conspicuous than their former enemies. Alligators and crocodiles 

 do not destroy human food, as do rats. They live principally on fish, 

 which they stun with a swish of the tail and skilfully sweep into their 

 jaws. But it must not therefore be thought that the fish are exter- 

 minated, or that man is deprived of a food-supply. In the jungle of 

 Ceylon I had an opportunity of observing an outlying tank in 

 which there were many crocodiles, but which nevertheless was 

 swarming with fish. In an unspoiled state of nature the predatory 

 animals do not exterminate their prey, for species is attuned to 

 species in its mode of life and its powers of multiplication. 



As for danger to human beings, the American crocodiles, and 

 as a general thing the alligators and caimans, are not man-eaters. 

 These animals seldom grow to more than twelve or thirteen feet 

 in length, and even this length is rarely attained by any but the 

 black caiman, an Amazonian species which has grown accustomed 

 to man, so that it will come to his camping-place and snap up the 

 scraps of meat that are thrown to him. Man-eating is reported only 

 in the case of the two largest of the armoured lizards, the Nile 



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