NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 317 



tans, acknowledging the miracle, dare not expose them- 

 selves there. 



After alluding to the veneration which the crocodile 

 experienced in some parts of Egypt in remote times, and 

 the fury mth which it was pursued and destroyed in 

 others, Sonnini remarks that in his time the crocodile 

 was neither reverenced nor destroyed. Banished to the 

 most southern part of Egypt, they assemble there, he 

 says, in vast numbers. They are to be seen when the 

 sun is at its height, their heads above the water, immov- 

 able, and appearing at a distance like large pieces of 

 floating wood, gliding slowly down with the current and 

 basking in the heat, in which they delight. He shot 

 several, approaching very close, which, as they were not 

 often disturbed, he was able to do; but he does not 

 appear to have bagged any like Mr. Gumming, with 

 whose best and worst dog the crocodiles of South 

 Africa made off. In the neighbourhood of Thebes, the 

 small boat in which Sonnini sailed up the river was often 

 surrounded by crocodiles. They saw the party pass with 

 indifference, neither discovering fear nor any cruel intent 

 at the approach of the voyagers. The noise of the 

 musket-shot alone disturbed their tranquillity. Sonnini 

 asserts that they never rise upon vessels, and that how 

 little soever the gunwales may be raised above the water, 

 nothing is to be apprehended from their attacks. But 

 he advises the navigator to avoid thrusting his arms or 

 legs into the stream, or he will run the risk of getting 

 them snapped off by the sharp-pointed teeth of the 

 crocodiles. Very alert in the water, which, he says, they 

 cleave with rapidity, they make, according to him, but 

 slow progress on dry land ; and were it not that their 

 colour and the coat of mud with which they cover them- 

 selves in walking along the miry shores of the Nile, dis- 

 guise them so as to render them less perceptible, and 

 thus expose men to be surprised by them, they are, he 

 declares, by no means so dangerous out of the watery 



