REPTILES. 



419 



travel to the pools and flooded forests, which line the banks of the Orinoco 

 and the Amazon; but when the dry season returns, and the waters fall, 

 they descend to the main river. Bates even declares that he has seen the 

 upper Amazon " as well stocked with large alligators, in the dry season, 

 as a ditch is in England with tadpoles." This form builds conical nests 

 of dry leaves, and lays in them about twenty eggs. Waterton's adven- 



Fig. 359. — Alligator {Alligator litems). 



tures with one of these caymans has often been told, but it will bear 

 one more repetition. He caught one of these animals on the Orinoco, 

 and getting astride of it rode it as one would a horse, until he thoroughly 

 exhausted it. 



It was not until 1870 that any crocodiles were known to inhabit the 

 United States, although they were well known in the West Indies and in 

 South America. In that year Dr. Wyman described a skull from Florida, 



