6 EMYDOSAURIAN AND TESTUDINIAN REPTILES 
Note :—In my paper on “‘ Australian Crocodiles ” 
published in the Society’s “‘ Proceedings” for the current 
year,* I make mention, when referring to the size to which 
this species attains, of a well authenticated example, captured 
in the Bengal Presidency, “‘ which measured no less than 
thirty-three feet.” (p. 208.) That this exceptional size may, 
perhaps, in some rare instances be approximated in our own 
waters, the following statement, which is vouched for by a 
gentleman in whose integrity I place the most implicit con- 
fidence, would seem to show. He assures me that he has on 
several occasions heard from the lips of an old identity of 
the Mackay district, who had had from forty to fifty years’ 
experience in the middle and northern zones of the State, 
the story of the death of a crocodile, shot on the Pioneer 
River, which, when brought ashore, was found to measure 
thirty-two feet; even allowing for a little exaggeration 
this individual must have been greatly above the average 
of the Queensland type, which would barely if at all exceed 
the half of that length. My informant indeed states that 
of the scores of “alligators” which he has caught or seen 
caught, not one exceeded eighteen feet in length. Personally 
I have seen a mounted specimen that measured twenty-three 
feet. 
As indicative of the strength and ferocity possessed by 
these reptiles and the indomitable tenacity of purpose by 
which they are animated, the following anecdote, related to 
me by the same gentleman from his personal experience, 
should be of absorbing interest. It appears that he had the 
rare good fortune of being an eye-witness, at within but a 
few yards’ distance, of one of those nameless and unnoted 
tragedies, which are doubtless of frequent occurrence in the 
ceaseless drama for ever unfolding itself amid the pregnant 
solitudes of our vast northern wilderness—a duel 4 outrance 
between a full-grown bull and one of these reptiles about six- 
teen feet long—between the lord of the forest and pasture 
and the lord of the river and lagune. His story was that while 
he and some friends were fishing in the Pioneer River, some 
miles above Mackay, a bull came down to drink within a 
short distance of the place where they were sitting ; while in 
the act of quenching its thirst the crocodile seized it by the 
*Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensland, XVIII., 1904, pp. 208 et seg. 
