Crocodiles and Alligators. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS. 



Their Habits — The Gayial 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- 

 Enemies of the Crocodile — Torpidity of Crocodiles during the Dry Season — 

 Their Awakening from their Lethargy with the First Eains — "Tickling a Cro- 

 codile." 



THERE 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 that lives in the waters which they frequent, they may with full 

 justice be called the very images of depravity, as perhaps wo 

 animals in existence bear in their countenance more decided 

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

 of a low cerebral developement ; the vast maw, garnished witli 

 formidable rows of conical teeth, entirely made for snatch aiul 

 swallow ; the elongated mud-coloured body, with its long lizard- 



