CATALOGUE OF SHIELD REPTILES. 



23 



dilus biscutatus, and figured the nuchal shields at t. 2. f. 0, 

 a species of Crocodile founded on a specimen in the French 

 Museum which is' lahelled in Adanson's handwriting 

 " Gaviirf du Senegal," and also on a very mutilated stuffed 

 specimen which Cuvier found in the Museum of the Aca- 

 demy of Sciences at Paris (see Oss. Foss. v. pp. 53, 65, t. 2. 

 f. 6). He ohserves, " The colour of these specimens is 

 scarcely darker than that of the common Crocodile ; there- 

 fore it cannot be the Black Crocodile of Adanson." And 

 he further specially remarks that " the jaws are a little 

 longer and narrower than those of C. vulgaris, but not so 

 long and slender as those of C. acutus." It resembles the 

 latter in the dorsal shield of the vertebral line being only 

 slightly keeled ; but its peculiar character is that the mid- 

 dle of its nape is armed with two large pyramidal shields, 

 and with two smaller ones in front of them. 



This Crocodile has been a paradox until this time. 

 MM. Dumeril and Bibron regarded this mutilated specimen 

 as only a specimen of the American Crocodile (C. ameri- 

 canus) with an anomalous development of the cervical and 

 nuchal shields, observing that the specimens of this species 

 are liable to variation in this respect ; but yet the)' do not 

 describe any as exactly resembling Cuvier's description or 

 figure. 



It does not appear that the specimen labelled by Adan- 

 son came under the examination of these naturalists ; at 

 least I cannot find any reference to it in their work. 

 Cuvier, unfortunately, does not state its size ; but I have 

 a strong opinion that it must have been a very young spe- 

 cimen of Meeistops ca taphractus, before its elongated jaws 

 were developed, and that the name of Oavial du Senegal 

 was very applicable to it. The back is grooved by the 

 flatness of the vertebral series of shields, as described by 

 Cuvier, and as is characteristic of the American Crocodile 

 (C. acutus) with which MM. Dumeril and Bibron compared 

 it. But this is a question which can only be solved by 

 the examination of the original specimens. 



Cuvier, in his Essay (vol. v. p. 58), observes, '• "When 

 in England in 1818, 1 saw at the Museum of the College 

 of Surgeons a dried specimen of a Crocodile." This he 

 describes and figures under the name of " Crocodile a nuque 

 cuirassee" (Crocodilus cataphr actus, nob.). 



In 1834 Mr. Edward Turner Bennett (P. Z. S. ii. p. 10) 

 gave a notice of a specimen of Crocodilus cataphractus of 

 Cuvier being alive in the gardens of the Zoological Society. 

 At the Meeting of the Society on the '22nd September, 

 1835 (P. Z. S. iii. p. 129), after the animal had died, on 

 more close examination he described this animal as a new 

 species, under the name of Crocodilus leptorhynchus ; 



and Mr. Martin added some notes on its internal 

 anatomy. 



It is to be observed that Mr. Bennett and I were misled 

 on this occasion by the erroneous breadth given to the 

 animal in the figure published by Cuvier ; for he speaks of 

 the length of the head being to its breadth as 3 to 1, in- 

 stead of 2| to 1. 



In the Catalogue of the Tortoises, Crocodiles, and 

 Amphibians in the Collection of the British Museum, 

 published in 1844, I formed a genus under the name of 

 Meeistops for this animal, and for the first time described 

 a full-grown specimen of it, which we had received from 

 the Gambia as Meeistops Bennett ii ; for M. Kendal con- 

 sidered it distinct from Cuvier's animal, but observed that 

 they might be varieties. This might all have been avoided 

 if we could have seen the original specimen ; but when I 

 inquired for it, it could not be found. 



The specimen described and figured by Cuvier is fortu- 

 nately now to be seen in the Museum of the College of 

 Surgeons, referred to under No. 710 in the Catalogue of 

 Osteological Specimens in that collection. It is a young 

 dried specimen of the Crocodile which is now so frequently 

 brought from the west coast of Africa ; and it affords no 

 ground for the supposition of M. Dumeril, expressed in his 

 paper " On the Reptiles of Western Africa " (Arch, du 

 Mus. v. p. 252), that these may be distinct species ; and it 

 shows that the figure of Cuvier, though characteristic, is 

 not very carefully drawn, and that any difference that may 

 appear results from want of accuracy in the figure, and is 

 not to be found in the animal itself, — supporting the opinion 

 that I expressed in my paper in the ' Ann. & Mag. Nat. 

 Hist.' ser. 3, x. p. 274. 



M. Auguste Dumeril, in his paper ' ; On the Reptiles of 

 Western Africa" (Archiv du Mus. x. p. 271), gives a good 

 figure of a half-grown specimen of this species under the 

 name of Crocodilus leptorhynchus, t. 14, and places by the 

 side of it a tracing of Cuvier's figure of Crocodilus cata- 

 phractus to show that they cannot be alike; but the com- 

 parison of the specimens on which these species wen' 

 founded shows how much better it is to refer to nature 

 than to depend on figures and descriptions, which are liable 

 to the imperfection attending human observation and record. 



Dr. Falconer, in the ' Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History' for 1846 (xviii. p. 302, t. 6), described and figured 

 a skull of this species under Cuvier's name, which was in 

 the Belfast Museum, and said to have been sent from 

 Sierra Leone. 



Dr. Balfour Baikie described the skull of a specimen 

 from the river Binue (see P. Z. S. 1857, p. 5S). 



