CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. 133 



CHAPTER XIII. 



CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. 



IN spite of the circumstance that numerous examples of 

 those ungainly reptiles known as crocodiles and alligators 

 are exhibited in the reptile house of the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens in a living condition, while their stuffed 

 skins and articulated skeletons are displayed in the galleries 

 of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, 

 there appears to be a hopeless confusion in the public 

 mind between these two very different creatures. And, 

 with the usual perversity of those not acquainted with the 

 ordinary facts of natural history, residents in India 

 increase this confusion by almost invariably speaking of 

 the crocodiles of that country as alligators, whereas an 

 alligator is not to be found from one end of India to 

 another. A remarkable instance of this confusion occurs 

 in Sir S. Baker's *' Wild Beasts and their Ways," where, 

 under the heading of crocodile, it is stated that, "as 

 lizards are found distributed in great varieties throughout 

 the world, in like manner we find the largest of all lizards, 

 the crocodile, under various names in nearly every river 

 of the tropics. In America this reptile is generally known 

 as an alligator, and some persons pretend to define the 

 peculiarity which distinguishes that variety from the 

 crocodile, but I regard the distinction in the same light 

 as that between the leopard and the panther, the difference 

 existing merely in a name." 



Now, in the first place, although it may be justifiable in 

 popular language to use the term "lizard" as applicable to 

 all four-footed reptiles except tortoises and turtles, yet, 

 scientifically speaking, a crocodile has not the slightest 

 right to be so termed. Indeed, it would be far preferable 

 to speak of a snake as a kind of lizard, since it is really 

 only a special modification of the lizard stock ; and from 

 a strictly scientific point of view it would imply much less 



