270 NATURAL HISTORY. 



huge jaws, and coming nearer and showing increased eagerness after each morsel. The enormous gape 

 of their mouths, with the blood-red lining and long fringes of teeth, and the uncouth shape of their 

 bodies, made a picture of unsurpassable ugliness. I once or twice fired a heavy charge of shot at them, 

 aiming at the vulnerable part of their bodies, which is a small space situated behind the eyes, but this 

 had no other effect than to make them give a hoarse grunt and shake themselves. They immediately 

 afterwards turned to receive another bone which I threw them." 



A small Alligator, not more than two feet in length, the Jacare curua, is found in shallow creeks 

 on the Lower Amazons. The Indians said one that was brought to Bates " was a mai d'ovos," or 

 mother of eggs, as they had pillaged the nest which they had found near the edge of the water. The 

 eggs were rather longer than a hen's and regularly oval in shape, presenting a rough, hard surface 

 of shell. This kind was cooked and eaten. 



Other Jacares have the head sharp, and the back is olive colour banded with brown, and one of 

 the group, the Dog-headed Jacare,* has the face and snout marked with dark spots at the sides, and 

 the skull is broad and shallow. It inhabits the Brazils about Periiambuco, and also Surinam. The 

 second kind is the Brazilian Jacare. The Long-shielded Jacare of Tropical America has an olive colour, 

 and the jaws are spotted.t It has a long head, 110 ridges in front of the orbit of any importance, and 

 the cervical disc is oblong, and it much resembles the Eyed Jacare J from the lake of Santa Cruz de 

 la Sierra. The Argentine Republic, Brazil, and Surinam, have a narrow-faced, high-nosed Jacare, whose 

 jaws are yellow in. colour, or spotted, the back being yellow banded with brown. It is called the 

 Dotted-jawed Jacare. And, finally, there is a kind from Demerara called the Rough-necked Jacare,|| 

 which has the scales on the side of the neck rough, spiny, and pale yellow, the back and tail being 

 brown and cross-barred. The cheeks and sides of the lower jaw are yellow and not spotted. 



It was formerly thought that Alligators were confined to the New World, and that all the 

 reptiles of this family living in the Old World were Crocodiles. It is, however, now known that a 

 true Alligator (Alligator sinensis) is found in China, and in 1890 two specimens were exhibited in 

 the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park. 



FOSSIL CROCODILIA. 



So numerous were the Crocodilia in the Secondary and Tertiary ages that a considerable 

 volume might be written upon their characteristics and localities; therefore a short summary of 

 their peculiarities can only be given here. In the endeavour to comprehend the structures of the 

 Crocodiles of old, the nature of the vertebrae and of the roof of the mouth of the Nilotic Crocodile 

 should be considered. The modern Crocodilia have the body of the vertebrae in front of 

 the sacrum concave or procoelous in front, and the hard palate is formed by the union of the 

 palate bones and of the pterygoid bones behind them, so that the internal air passage from the 

 outer nostril is far back in the long mouth. This group of Crocodilia, embracing the three 

 modern families of Crocodile, Gavial, and Alligator, has a great antiquity, for Crocodilia with the 

 above anatomical characters, existed in the age of the Green Sand of America and of the Upper 

 Cretaceous of Europe. Thoracosaurus (Leidy), Holops (Cope), from America, and Gavialis ma- 

 crorhynchus, of the European Chalk, are to be classified with this modern group termed by Owen 

 "Proccelia." The Crocodilia of the Tertiary age found in the London Clay, the Plastic Clay of 

 Meudon, and the Calcaire Grossier of Castelnaudary, and in the Eocene deposits of Bracklesham 

 were large, and all the three families were represented in those times : that is to say, such forms as 

 Crocodilus toliapicus, Crocodilus hantoniensis, and Crocodilus dixoni, are indications that Crocodiles, 

 Alligators, and Gavials lived then in Western Europe. In the later Tertiary deposits the group is 

 represented, and in the Sewalik hills in the Himalayas there is a thick-toothed Crocodile of extinct 

 species, and one which resembles the Muggar. 



The great series of strata belonging to the Secondary rocks, from the Lower Lias to the Upper 

 Chalk inclusive, contain evidences of the former existence of another group of Crocodilia. The genera 

 which form it probably led marine and along-shore lives, and the more terrestrial kinds, such as would 

 now be the true Crocodiles and some Alligators, have not been handed down by fossil remains. Gavial- 



* Jacare latirostris (Gray)= Alligator cynocephalus (Dum., et Bib.). t Jacare longiscutata. 



t Jacare ocellaia (Gray). Jacare punctulata (Gray)=Jacare sclerops (Gray). || Jacare hirticollis (Gray). 



