64 THE STORY OF REPTILE LIFE. 



it harmonizes the more completely with its sur- 

 roundings. It is quite possible that the narrator 

 of this episode may have passed several crocodiles 

 thus concealed, they having had warning of his 

 approach before he discovered them. 



That a crocodile should be susceptible to 

 tickling seems hardly likely. Yet this is a 

 fact. Sir Emerson Tennent gives an instance 

 which came under his own observation. " One 

 morning . . . we came suddenly upon a croco- 

 dile asleep under some bushes . . . several 

 hundred yards from the water. The terror of 

 the poor wretch was extreme when it awoke 

 and found itself surrounded. ... It started to 

 its feet and turned round in a circle, hissing 

 and clanking its bony jaws, with its ugly green 

 eyes fixed upon us. On being struck with a 

 stick, it lay perfectly quiet and apparently dead. 

 Presently it looked cunningly round and made 

 a rush towards the water, but on a second blow 

 it lay again motionless and feigning death. We 

 tried to rouse it, but without effect . . . nothing- 

 would induce it to move till, accidentally, my 

 son, then a boy of twelve years old, tickled it 

 gently under the arm, and in an instant it drew 

 the limb close to its side, and turned to avoid 

 a repetition of the experiment. Again it was 

 touched under the other arm, and the same 

 emotion was exhibited, the great monster twist- 

 ing about like an infant to avoid being tickled." 



During times of great drought, they, like the 

 African mud-fish Protopterus, bury themselves 

 in the mud and remain in a state of torpor till 

 released by the return of the rains. Occasion- 



