A JAVA SAURIAN. 47 



limb that overlooked the water, and surgeon birds ran 

 over the floating lily leaves in eager pursuit of the 

 water insects on which they feed. It was, in fact, a 

 scene only to be witnessed in the tropics of South 

 Africa, and one that, once seen, can never be for- 

 gotten. 



To add to all this animal life, the river fairly 

 swarmed with crocodiles ; on one sand-bar, not over 

 a hundred yards long, I counted thirteen of these 

 hideous monsters, several of which must have 

 measured over a dozen feet, while one veteran, I 

 feel convinced, would have stretched the tape line 

 to fifteen feet. 



In Java I saw a crocodile almost seventeen feet 

 long ; it frequented the vicinity of a place where the 

 village women were in the habit of assembling to 

 wash their clothes, and, if report spoke truly, many 

 were the Malay females it had carried off. At length 

 it was captured by using a live dog for bait. After 

 being transferred from its watery home to the com- 

 mandant's garden, it was safely secured upon the 

 lawn by innumerable moorings. Our assistant sur- 

 geon administered the saurian an immense dose of 

 strychnine, enough, as he said, to poison a regiment, 

 but it had not the slightest injurious effect upon the 

 brute. Its skin, I believe, is still to be seen at the 

 Dutch East Indian Museum, at Amsterdam. If 

 there is one animal more than another detested by 

 the human race, it is the crocodile, and, if possible, 



