OF THE UNITED STATES 161 



Gavials may attain a length of nearly 20 feet, and, as in the 

 case of the South American jacare's and caimans, they are not 

 dangerous to either man or beast. Their chief occupation con- 

 sists in devouring the dead carcasses that find their way into In- 

 dia's great sacred river Ganges, and in this particular they per- 

 form a very useful office. ^Elian, one of the historians of the an- 

 cients, knew of the existence of this reptile in the rivers of In- 

 dia, and he mentioned it in his writings as the crocodile that had 

 a horn at the distal end of its snout. 



Speaking of the literature of the group, however, the great 

 bulk of it has been devoted to the true crocodiles. This, of 

 course, is due to the fact that crocodiles of the Old World were 

 known and written about long, long before America was even 

 discovered or her alligators dreamed of by natural historians. 

 In the manner of rearing their young, procuring and consuming 

 food, methods of attack upon man and the larger quadrupeds, 

 and, indeed, in their general habits, the crocodiles and alligators 

 closely agree in all. Both the eggs and young have many destroy- 

 ers, as birds, fish, turtles, man, and the male of the species so 

 that it is not likely that more than one young crocodile in forty 

 comes to maturity, and this, far from the settlements of men. 



Crocodiles when captured alive frequently feign death to a re- 

 markable degree. Tennant, while traveling in Ceylon, I think, 

 states that " on one occasion his party came upon a sleeping 

 crocodile, which on being struck, after it had awakened and seen 

 itself surrounded, lay perfectly quiet and apparently dead; in a 

 little while it was seen to glance furtively about, and then make 

 a rush towards the water. On receiving a second blow it again 

 feigned death, and this time no amount of poking could elicit the 

 slightest sign of life, until a lad, by gently tickling it under the 

 fore leg, caused the reptile so far to forget itself as to draw up its 

 limb." 



An alligator, or a crocodile, can go a whole year without eating 

 or drinking, a feat that can be performed in a lesser degree by 

 most lizards, as the writer has often proved. The crocodile re- 

 sorts to numerous stratagems to secure its larger quadrupedal 

 prey, and, as it has a most formidable weapon at either end of its 

 body, the probabilities in favor of certain statements, whether 

 authenticated or not, are simply doubled. A blow from its tail 

 will knock down and stun a big animal, while a powerful lever 

 will not force its jaws apart when once it has taken a good hold. 



