SIR HANS SLOANE. 41 



which are the most pleasing food for these sort of 

 serpents. It is upon this account that the Euro- 

 pean nations inhabiting the countries producing 

 sugar, do not molest these creatures, because they 

 destroy the rats, (which came originally from 

 ships cast away on the coast, &c.) which multiply 

 strangely there, and do infinite mischief to the 

 sugar canes, not only by eating them, but spoiling 

 the juice of those they gnaw. 



" The guana used to feed on calabash pulp, and 

 lived very well on board of the yacht, till one day, 

 when it was running along the gunnel of the 

 vessel, a seaman frighted it, and it leaped over- 

 board and was drowned. 



" The Crocodile, or Alligator, I kept in a tub of 

 salt water towards the forecastle, and fed it with 

 the same sort of food as the snake, but it died on 

 the 15th of May. Thus I lost, by this time of 

 the voyage, all my live creatures ; and so it 

 happens to most people, who lose their strange 

 live animals for want of proper air, food, or 

 shelter." 



Immediately on his arrival, he settled as a 

 physician. The collections he had brought home 

 with him excited the curiosity and admiration of 

 the learned, and contributed to his public fame. 

 " Several circumstances," says Dr Pulteney,* 

 " concurred respecting the voyage of Dr Sloane 



* History of the Progress of Botany in England, 

 vol. ii. p. 09. 



