CROCODILES. 59 
as a pet, he isa very interesting one, and also a very ancient one. 
In olden days, the Egyptians used not only to worship these 
animals, or rather their near relatives the Crocodiles, but to 
keep them as pets which they treated with every reverence and 
care, decking them with golden earrings, studded with rare 
jewels, and placing bracelets of the same precious metal round 
their forefeet. They really dreaded the monsters, and did what- 
ever they could to ‘‘ propitiate’’ them. 
In the ruins of Egyptian temples mummies of Crocodiles are 
occasionally found in an excellent state of preservation. 
Almost every schoolboy knows that some of the Roman 
Emperors used to introduce into the amphitheatres, for the 
purpose of gratifying their own and their subjects’ love of 
excitement and bloodshed, almost every kind of wild beast: 
lions, tigers, bears, and the like, and among them, sometimes 
Crocodiles. Thirty-six of these huge Reptiles were, at the 
expense of the Emperor Augustus, turned at once into the circus 
and slain by the gladiators. 
One can hardly help remarking here upon the skill of the old 
hunters, who lived hundreds of years before the time of railways 
and steamboats, and yet were able to bring to Rome these fierce 
and, very often, rare animals. The successful capture and trans- 
portation of wild beasts is by no means an easy matter even in our 
own day. 
The father of historians, Herodotus, recorded a fact of natural 
history in regard to the Crocodile which has often been scoffed 
at and derided, namely, that the interior of this Reptile’s mouth 
is frequently covered with a kind of leech which troubles it not a 
little. And though all birds, as a rule, fly from this animal, 
there is one which even ventures to enter its open mouth, and to 
feed upon the leeches there, and so frees the Crocodile of its tor- 
mentors. The huge beast shows its gratitude for such a service 
by never hurting the bird. Many of the naturalists of the present 
day consider that this assertion of Herodotus is correct in the main. 
Mr. John M. Cook, in a letter which was published in the Zdis, 
gives an interesting account of seeing the Crocodile-bird at work. 
This bird, which is known locally as the ‘‘ Zic-zac,” is the Spur- 
winged Plover (Hoplopterus spinosus). 
