CEOCODILES. 

 (Dec. 3, 1892.) 



" THE river Nilus nourisheth the Crocodile ; a 

 venomous creature, foure footed, as dangerous on 

 water as land. This beast alone, of all others that 

 keepe the land, hath no use of a tongue ; he only 

 moveth the upper jaw or mandible, wherewith he 

 biteth hard ; and otherwise terrible he is, by reason 

 of the course and ranke of his teeth, which close 

 one within another, as if two combes grew together. 

 Ordinarily he is above eighteene cubits in length. 

 His feet be armed with claws for offence, and his 

 skin so hard, that it will abide any injury whatso- 

 ever and not be pierced." Thus quaintly, and 

 with the odd mixture of fact and fable so common 

 to all old-world writers, does Pliny, or rather his 

 seventeenth-century translator Philemon Holland, 

 Doctor of Physicke, describe the crocodile. 



Crocodiles have always exercised a weird fas- 

 cination over men, with the result that the ancient 

 Egyptians worshipped them while living and made 

 mummies of them when dead, and that books 

 of natural history and travel in all ages have 

 abounded in anecdotes and fables concerning them. 

 Indeed, there are so many of these wonderful 

 M 2 



