402 HAITI. 



ceptibility to be roused at the canine yelp to the 

 similarity of that sound to its own 'peculiar cry, 

 under any species of excitement ; — to the fact that 

 it is the impassioned voice of its young — to the 

 maternal solicitude of the female for its progeny 

 when it hears that voice — and to the ravenous ap- 

 petite of the male on the same occasion ; for, like 

 many of the rapacious animals, the male of this tribe 

 preys upon its own offspring.* 



" It is not very clear whether the male parent, 

 after it has sought the attachment of the female, in 

 which its passion is fierce and violent, assists her in 

 the office of disposing the eggs in the earth. It is 

 much more likely, from the necessity of her after 

 watchfulness to guard against his reprisals, that he 

 does not. After burying the eggs in the soil, to be 

 there matured by the sun, the female visits from 

 time to time the place in which they are secreted, 

 and, just as the period of hatching is completed, ex- 

 hibits her eagerness for her offspring in the anxiety 

 with which she comes and goes, walks around the 

 nest of her hopes, scratches the fractured shell, 

 and by sounds which resemble the hark of a dog, ex- 

 cites the half-extricated young to struggle forth into 

 life. When she has beheld, with this sort of joy, 

 fear, and anxiety, the last of her offspring quit its 

 broken casement, she leads them forth into the 

 plashy pools, away from the river, and among the 



* Professor Buckland has discovered In the excrementitious fossils 

 of the Plesiosaurus or Fish Lizard evidences of a similar rapacious 

 appetite in those extinct animals. The bones of the young Plesio- 

 saurus were found in the petrified dung of the older ones. 



