THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 137 



quantities of fruit. They also eat the different kinds of mangrove 

 nuts and other edible wild fruits, such as those of the various 

 species of Ficus (fig-trees) so plentiful in the scrubs. They move 

 about silently, but, should a contention arise among them, they 

 make weird, piercing shrieks. Their presence can be readily 

 detected when resting in the daytime by the pungent musky 

 odour they emit. They appear very large when flying, and 

 specimens have measured 4)^ feet from tip to tip of the ex- 

 tended wings. On the ground they are extremely helpless, and 

 in the daytime appear to be blinded by the light. Their general 

 appearance is uninviting, and it is no wonder that it is recorded 

 that, when Captain Cook was voyaging these parts, and one day 

 sent a boat ashore to obtain fresh water, one of the sailors while 

 searching for water came suddenly upon a large Flying Fox 

 flopping about on the ground, whereupon he rushed back to the 

 boat and breathlessly announced that he had seen the devil. 



In the tropics, owing to the great heat, one usually sleeps with 

 the window wide open, and on one occasion I was rudely 

 disturbed from my slumbers by one of these uncanny creatures. 

 They are very fond of the fruit of the Paw Paw tree. One of 

 these trees laden with ripe fruit was growing alongside my window, 

 and attracted the attention of some of these animals, when one 

 of them, perhaps mistaking the opening for the entrance to a 

 cave, where they also like to sleep, entered and commenced flying 

 round my room, when, discovering its mistake, it vainly 

 endeavoured to get out again, and in doing so brushed over my 

 face, waking me. On lighting my candle I found the intruder 

 to be a large Flying Fox, which I quickly despatched with a boot. 

 Further sleep that night was out of the question, and next night 

 I awoke in a terrible nightmare, and from the appearance of the 

 bedclothes I must have been wrestling with another of these 

 gruesome creatures in my dreams. 



Crocodiles, Crocodihis porosus, infest the tidal mouths of the 

 streams and vie with sharks in gobbling up the large Sand Mullet 

 and other fish which abound in those genial tropical waters. 

 Crocodiles — they are usually called alligators, but there are no 

 alligators in Australia — lay from 60 to 70 eggs, in a nest composed 

 of mud and vegetable rubbish in the mangroves ; the eggs are 

 covered over by the mother with this vegetable material, which, 

 as it rots, assisted by the sun, generates sufficient heat to hatch 

 out the eggs. The mother lies in a wallow alongside the eggs, in 

 order to protect them from the depredations of wild pigs and 

 other enemies. 



One day, whilst collecting birds in the mangroves, I stumbled 

 across a female crocodile in a wallow by her nest, and as I 

 was looking upwards in search of birds I got within a dozen 

 yards of her without knowing it. She soon let me know of her 



