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, dazzling white 
and sizzling under a burning sun. These vast level stretches fill up during 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 flat pans, and a more or less haphazard 
harvesting of salt is carried on. The whole region should be a typical 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. Evi- 
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 life 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 Bafios de Ciego 
Montero. Photographs of a fossil skull, due to the kindness of Dr. W. D. 
Matthew, show that these early crocodiles 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- 
bility 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. 
