ANTHROPOPHAGOUS CROCODILES. 63 



plants, bread, nuts, corn, <kc. although she sometimes does not 

 disdain meat and liver. Hans, on the contrary, bold, eager, and 

 suspicious, a true tyrant withal over his wife, is passionately fond 

 of everything he can get in the way of animal food. Formerly, 

 when aquaria stood in the room in which Hans and Gretel lived, 

 he often tried to catch fish or crustaceans, which he devoured 

 eagerly ; fat, liver or meat, eggs or frogs, ant's eggs or insects in 

 short, every kind of animal food is acceptable to him, and he laps 

 the blood of freshly slain beasts with the utmost satisfaction. It 

 is evident that Hans first became accustomed in my laboratory 

 to most of these articles of diet. In itself the matter certainly 

 is not so very surprising, since most or very many rodents 

 are polyphagous, or even omnivorous animals ; but it is rendered 

 interesting by the fact that the female has by no means accus- 

 tomed herself to an animal diet in the same way as the male. 

 This brings me to an observation which, in the course of my 

 travels, I once had occasion to make very much against my will. 

 The Egyptian crocodile Crocodiius biporcatus is, as we 

 know, very widely distributed, and it lives in great numbers in 

 the rivers and on the sea-shore of the Philippine Islands. In 

 Egypt this creature is considered extremely dangerous, and is 

 said to have a particular predilection for human flesh. When 

 I was travelling in the Philippine Islands I was often told 

 by the natives that they distinguished two soils of crocodiles, of 

 which one ate men in preference to other food, while the other 

 did not ; several of the former were said to be well known to the 

 native?, and in Cagayan in Luzon, where I saw the skeleton 

 quite 22 feet long of a crocodile caught not long before, I was 

 assured that a gigantic anthropophagous crocodile lived in the 

 river and could not be caught, and had for years been known 

 to the natives by a particular nickname. I was much inclined 

 to doubt this story till I went through a little adventure which 

 J< 3 it seem to me certainly by no means improbable. On 

 f my excursions in the north-east of Luzon we (my servant 

 io and I) had crossed a wide but shallow river early in 

 nas ac forning in a canoe ; when we returned in the evening the 

 j^had disappeared, and not a living soul was to be seen any- 

 Ol \ere. After long waiting in vain we decided on walking 



