298 THE ALLIGATOR. 



may be perfectly true. But the following reasons in- 

 cline me to think otherwise. 



In the first place, if the female alligator were to ex- 

 hibit such care and fondness as Chateaubriand ascribes 

 to her, the old lady would, after a time, find herself 

 sadly bothered, for generally the young brood are not 

 all hatched at the same time. Days, and sometimes 

 wrecks, elapse, between the respective appearances of the 

 first and the last, and during this time the youngsters 

 would suffer all kinds of evils, as indeed they do, while 

 the mother watched by the remaining eggs. I have fre- 

 quently seen them of various sizes, from four inches up 

 to a foot in length, and I amused myself by pinning 

 them to the ground with a forked stick, and watching 

 their spiteful pugnacious looks and attitudes. 



As for the young alligators requiring any tuition in 

 the art of swimming, I should fancy it would be about 

 as necessary to place a cork jacket on the body of a 

 young duck, or to give a frog bladders with which to 

 buoy himself up. 



The teeth are of different sizes, though each jaw 

 contains an equal number. As a general rule, a long- 

 tooth and a short one will be found alternately. These 

 teeth are hollow within, and are successively pushed 

 out by others as the animal increases in size. This 

 shedding of the teeth is believed to take place every 

 year, and if you knock one off, the young tooth will be 

 found underneath. The hunters frequently carve these 



