PREFACE 



The American Alligator, although very well known 

 throughout the territory it inhabits, is a maligned and much 

 misunderstood reptile, and but little accurate data has been 

 recorded concerning it's life history. Owing to the loca- 

 tion of my home, I have had unusual opportunities to 

 observe alligators all of my life. 



Avery Island, Louisiana, where I was born and have al- 

 ways lived, is a series of hills rising about two hundred feet 

 above the coastal plain of South Louisiana and is located 

 about half way between New Orleans and the Texas line. 

 This happens to be about the centre of the greatest abun- 

 dance of the Louisiana Alligators. 



In my boyhood days before these reptiles had been dis- 

 turbed by hide-hunters I came in contact with them con- 

 stantly, and seeing them was such an every-day occurance 

 that no unusual notice was taken of them by the children 

 playing and swimming in the streams. They were looked 

 upon as part of our natural surroundings, and we paid no 

 more attention to them than we did to the flocks of birds 

 about the place. 



Our old family home, built in 1832 on the southwest side 

 of Avery Island (which island covered about six thousand 

 acres of hill and low land in its entirety, and has been the 

 property of my family for several generations), stands 

 upon a high hill which slopes down to the boat landing on 

 the bayou, about five hundred yards from the house. 



Among the earliest remembrance of my childhood is 

 running down with my brothers and cousins and other small 

 boys in the warm summer afternoons to the boathouse to 

 swim; each boy trying to see who could get in the water 

 first. The bayou is about one hundred and fifty feet wide 



