CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. 



Their Habits — The Gavial and the Tiger — Mode of Seizing their Prey—Their 

 Voice — Their Preference of Human Flesh — Alligator against Alligator — Won- 

 derful Tenacity of Life — Tenderness of the Female Cayman for her Young — 

 The Crocodile of the Nile — Its Longevity — Enemies of the Crocodile — Torpidity 

 of Crocodiles during the Dry Season — Their Awakening from their Lethargy 

 with the First Rains — ' Tickling a Crocodile.' 



INHERE was a time, long before man appeared upon the scene, 

 when huge Crocodiles swarmed in the rivers of England, 

 and, for aught we know, basked on the very spot where now 

 their grim representatives can hardly be said to adorn the 

 grounds of Sydenham Palace. 



But the day when the ferocious, bone-harnessed Saurians 

 lorded it in the European streams has passed, never to return ; 

 the diminished warmth of what are now the temperate regions 

 of the globe having long since confined them to the large 

 rivers and lagunes of the torrid zone. The scourge and terror 

 of all tliat lives in the waters which they frequent, they may 

 with full justice be called the very images of depravity, as 

 perhaps no animals in existence bear in their countenance more 

 decided marks of cruelty and malice. The depressed head, so 

 significant of a low cerebral development ; the vast maw, 

 garnished with formidable rows of conical teeth, entirely made 

 for snatch and swallow ; the elongated mud-coloured body, with 



