DOMESTIC LIFE. 141 



nevertheless, remain undetected, and these would 

 probably be sufficient to keep the turtle popula- 

 tion of the rivers up to the mark, if the people 

 did not follow the wasteful practice of lying in 

 wait for the newly-hatched young, and collecting 

 them by thousands for eating, their tender flesh 

 and the remains of the yolk in their entrails 

 being considered a great delicacy. The chief 

 natural enemies of the turtle are vultures and 

 alligators, which devour the newly-hatched young 

 as they descend in shoals to the water. These 

 must have destroyed an immensely greater num- 

 ber before European settlers began to appropriate 

 the eggs than they do now. It is almost doubt- 

 ful if this natural persecution did not act as 

 effectively in checking the increase of the turtle 

 as the artificial destruction now does. If we are 

 to believe the tradition of the Indians, however, 

 it had not this result, for they say that formerly 

 the waters teemed as thickly with turtles as the 

 air does now with mosquitoes. The universal 

 opinion of the settlers on the Upper Amazon is, 

 that the turtle has very greatly decreased in 

 numbers and is still annually deer easing. " 



But this is a digression, though it is hoped 

 a pardonable one. Let us return to our subject 

 the Care for the Young. 



Among the Crocodiles, a veritable nest is built, 

 although in its simplest form this differs but little 

 from the hole dug by the majority of reptiles. 

 The Common Crocodile, for example (Crocodilus 

 niloticus), has been observed in Madagascar to 

 dig a hole in the sand of from eighteen inches 

 to two feet deep, so contrived that the bottom 



