NOTE -BOOK OF A NATUEALIST. 327 



shell, and are as large as those of a goose, but not so 

 oval. The female is said to guard the nest or place of 

 deposit, and to bestow maternal care upon the young 

 durino' some months. 



o 



The form is widely spread. Asia, Africa, and America 

 have it. There is no authentic record of its ever having 

 inhabited Europe, in the present state of the world at 

 least ; unless we are to give credit to the assertion of 

 Malte-Brun, that one was taken in the Rhone some two 

 centuries ago. The fifth quarter of the globe, Austral- 

 asia, has not as yet been found to possess it. The muzzle 

 of the crocodiles is not so wide as that of the alligators 

 or ca3rmans ; and some of the Asiatic species, the gavials* 

 for example, have the jaws elongated into a narrow 

 snout, with a rounded termination, reminding one in 

 some degree of the beak of a gigantic spoonbill armed 

 with teeth. The alligators, according to some, derive 

 their name from the Portuguese word lag art o, signifying 

 a lizard ; some make it a modification of the Indian 

 word legateer, or allegater ; and others, again, suppose 

 that it is simply a corruption of the words al lagatore,^ 

 the inhabitant of the lake or lagoon — for travellers agree 

 generally in stating that the caymans are never found in 

 the rapids, or even in the running parts of the stream, 

 but in creeks, lagoons, or back waters. There is this 

 difference, also, between them and the true crocodiles, 

 that whereas the latter frequently descend beyond the 

 brackish water of great rivers, even into the sea — the 

 greater species that inhabits the Ganges, for example, — 

 and have been known to swim from island to island 

 where the distance has been considerable, no such migra- 

 tions have been generally recorded on the part of the 

 alligators, which, it has been said, never quit the fresh 



* More properly, garrliidls, 

 t Sloane, who writes allagator, alienator, alagarta, and alagartos, 

 derives it from the Spanish alagarta, a lizard. 



