3 i2 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



being very deceitful, and, by its weeping, attracted its 

 victims. Sir John Mandeville thus describes them : 

 " In this land, and many other places of Inde, are many 

 cocodrilles, that is a maner of a long serpent, and on 

 nights they dwell on water, and on dayes they dwell 

 on land and rocks, and they eat not in winter. These 

 serpents sley men, and eate them weeping, and they 

 have no tongue." 



On the contrary, the Crocodile has a tongue, and a 

 very large one too. As to the fable of its weeping, 

 do we not even to this day call sham mourning, 

 " shedding crocodile's tears ? " Spenser, in his " Faerie 

 Queene," thus alludes to its supposed habits (B. I. 

 c. 5. xviii.) : 



" As when a weaiie traveller, that strayes 

 By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile, 

 Unweeting of the perillous wandring wayes, 

 Doth meete a cruell craftie crocodile, 

 Which in false griefe hyding his harmeful guile, 

 Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender tears : 

 The foolish man, that pities all this while 

 His mourneful plight, is swallowed up unawares, 

 Forgetfull of his owne, that mindes another's cares." 



And Shakespeare, from whom we can obtain a quo- 

 tation on almost anything, makes Othello say (Act iv. 

 sc. i) : 



" O devil, devil ! 



If that the earth could teem with woman's tears, 

 Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile ; 

 Out of my sight ! " 



Gcsner, and Topsell, in his " Historic of Four-Footcd 

 Beastes," give the accompanying illustration of a hippo- 

 potamus eating a crocodile, the original of which, they 



