NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 329 



throat has attraction for the fish, as the anglers of old 

 were used to anoint their baits with perfumed unguents 

 to draw the finny race to their hooks. But, although fish 

 form the principal food of the alligators, they not unfre- 

 quently seize on land animals, which, if too large to be 

 swallowed whole, they sink beneath the bank, till it be- 

 comes what venison-eaters term rather high, when it is 

 brought out and devoured at leisure on the bank. Some 

 of them have been kno^vn to attack men while bathing 

 or SAvimming across rivers ; and there goes a saying, that 

 they prefer the flesh of a negro to any other delicacy. 

 Sonnini, when he notices the belief above referred to, that 

 the Christian bears a charmed life against the crocodile, 

 while the Mussulman is devoured, states that he has 

 read somewhere, that in Western Africa the reptile not 

 only prefers the negro, but never touches the white 

 Christian. 



Like several fishes, gold and silver fish and carp for 

 example, the alligators live at their ease in waters of a 

 very high temperature. Bartram found great numbers, 

 both alligators and fish, in a spring near the Mosquito 

 River, in Florida, strongly impregnated with vitriol, and 

 nearly at boiling point where it issued from the earth. 



At St. Domingo, M. Ricord had opportunities of wit- 

 nessing the mode in which reproduction is carried on 

 among the crocodilians of that island. In April and 

 May, he tells us, the female deposits from twenty to 

 twenty-five eggs, more or less, in the sand, without much 

 care, and indeed hardly covering them. He met with 

 them occasionally in the lime which the masons had left 

 on the river s bank. According to his reckoning, and 

 if the temperature be sufficiently genial, the young come 

 forth five or six inches in length on the fortieth day. 

 They are hatched without aid, and as they are able to 

 exist without nourishment while extricating themselves 

 from the egg, the female is in no haste to bring it to 



