NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 305 



musty; and yet everybody may not know that there was 

 another version besides the vulgar one, of working upon 

 the kind-hearted traveller by apparent distress, getting 

 him within reach, and then destroying him. It was held 

 for certain that when a crocodile had got hold of a man 

 and killed him, it consumed its prey comfortably enough 

 till it came to the head, which would have proved too 

 hard a nut for our crocodile to crack, without pouring 

 forth a copious shower of tears as a solvent, which 

 softened the skull, and put the ravenous reptile in easy 

 possession of its tit-bit — the brain. 



One of their horrible functions, among the Indians, 

 was to act as the finishers of the law in capital cases, as 

 elephants were employed by Asiatic autocrats not very 

 many years since,* but in a different manner, as may be 

 well su23posed. The crocodile-executioners were kept 

 without food when judgment of death was anticipated ; 

 and the condemned wretch was dragged to the tank, 

 where the hungTy monsters glared at him with their 

 green cannibal eyes, as the assistants deliberately bound 

 him hand and foot, and then tossed him alive to the 

 chasms of their gaping, serrated, clanking jaws. They 



* Mr. Sirr, in his entertaining book, Ceylon and the Cingalese 

 (8vo. London, 1850, Shoberl), mentions a striking instance of 

 the docility of one of these elephants. 



During the reign of the last blood-stained king of Kandy, the 

 ten-ible custom which had long prevailed of execution by elephants, 

 who were trained to prolong the suffering of the doomed criminal 

 by crushing the limbs before the coiip-de-grace was given, pre- 

 vailed. 



One of the elephant-executioners was at that place during Mr. 

 Sirr's sojourn there, and he was desirous of testing the sagacity 

 and memory of the brute. It was of huge size, and mottled, and 

 stood quietly with the keeper seated on its neck. The noble, who 

 accompanied Mr. Sirr and his party, desired the man to dismount 

 and stand on one side. 



The chief gave the word of command, — ' Slay the wretch !' 



The elephant raised his trunk, and twined it as if grasping a 



