316 LEAVES FROM THE 



unknown to the ancients, and to which these brilliant 

 birds are exclusively confined. Linnaeus, who gives the 

 Egyptian dotterell a place among his charadrii (plovers), 

 makes no sign as to its being the trochilua of Hero- 

 dotus, and he adopts that word as the specific name of 

 the common wren of our hedges.* 



In the grand battle between the hippopotami and the 

 crocodiles, represented on the plinth of the statue of 

 Nilus, a somewhat long-billed but rather corpulent long- 

 legged bird seems ready to come to the assistance of a 

 crocodile, which has a hippopotamus fast by the nose. 

 Another and similar bird stands calmly before an open- 

 mouthed crocodile. If the sculptor intended these for 

 trochili, they have not much of the wren about them, 

 nor of the plover either. They may have been meant 

 for ibises looking on at the row. 



Hasselquist declares that the crocodiles do inexpres- 

 sible mischief to the common people of Upper Egypt, 

 often killing and devouring women who come to the 

 river to fetch water, and children playing on the shore or 

 swimming in the river. He relates that in the stomach 

 of one dissected before Mr. Barton, the English consul, 

 the bones of the legs and arms of a woman, with the 

 rings which Egyptian women wear as ornaments, were 

 found. The fishermen, whose nets are broken by the 

 crocodiles if they come in his way, are, he says, often 

 exposed to great danger from those terrible monsters. 



Sonnini relates that they are formidable to the inha- 

 bitants, and that in some places the natives are obliged 

 to form in the river an enclosure of stakes and faggots, 

 that the women, in drawing water, may not have their 

 legs carried off by the crocodiles. The Catholics, he 

 adds, are persuaded that those hideous destroyers Avill 

 attack a Mussulman, but forbear to injure a Christian 

 and bathe without fear in the Nile, while the Mahome- 



* Motacilla trochilus. 



