36 The Alligator and Its Allies 



second piece had disappeared what he had been 

 eating. It always seemed strange to me that the 

 poor people of the South should not more often 

 vary the monotony of fat pork and corn bread 

 with alligator steaks. Whether the meat could be 

 smoked or salted so that it would keep in a hot 

 climate I do not know; I am not aware of any 

 experiments along this line. 



The Chinese Alligator 



Beside the American form, Alligator mississip- 

 piensis, the only other species of alligator is found 

 in China, along the Yang-tse-Kiang River; it is 

 Alligator sinensis. It reaches a length of six feet 

 and externally resembles its American relative; 

 it is greenish black above speckled with yellow; 

 grayish below. 



The Caiman 



This is the nearest relative of the alligator and 

 is found in Central America and tropical South 

 America. As seen by the table on page 2, it is 

 usually a small animal, though one species, the 

 black caiman, is said to reach a length of twenty 

 feet (Fig. 10). The nasal bones do not form a 

 bony septum as in the alligator and the ventral 

 armor consists of overlapping bony scutes. The 

 canine teeth of the lower jaw fit into a pit in the 

 upper jaw, as in the alligator. 



