CLASS III AMPHIBIA. 227 



III. MEANTES, or gliders; of which there is only the 

 siren. 



IV, NANTES, or swimming amphibia; which are pin- 

 nated, and respire by lateral branchiae, or gills, including 

 the ray, lamprey, and others. 



Of animals so very different in their nature and habi- 

 tudes, it is impossible to give any general uniform account. 

 In the order of reptiles are placed the harmless frog, so 

 tenacious of life, the valuable tortoise, and the formidable 

 alligator, or crocodile; which last is the largest of the 

 lizard genus, and abounds in the Nile, the Niger, the La 

 Plata, the Ganges, and other spacious rivers within the 

 torrid zone. The general food of these monsters is fish, 

 which they devour in astonishing quantities; but, when 

 their supplies in the water are too scanty to satisfy their 

 voracious appetites, they conceal themselves in the sedge, 

 or reeds, by the side of their native streams, till an op- 

 portunity presents itself of attacking some other animal, 

 man himself not excepted. 



In our happy quarter of the globe, we have few among 

 the order of serpents that are noxious ; and the bite of all 

 operates" in a similar manner, by exciting a burning pain ; 

 for which we have various antidotes, but none more effica- 

 cious and safe than olive oil. 



Within the torrid zone, however, where the fields are at 

 once fertile and uncultivated, and the climate warm and 

 humid, this terrible race reigns in all its malignity ; and 

 some species are equally tremendous by their magnitude, 

 and fatal from their bite. 



In the early ages of the world, when mankind were 

 few, and these animals continued the undisputed tyrants 

 of a country through a succession of years, it is very 

 probable that they grew to a size of which we have no 

 modern examples. History, indeed, records several in- 

 stances of this kind; and, when we contemplate the liboya, 

 which is well known to be capable of killing an ox by its 

 mere strength, and has been found thirty or forty feet 

 long, we must not incredulously reject, as fabulous, every 

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