316 SPORT IX BENGAL. 



keep to rivers as a rule. Those which resort to marshes and 

 tanks are not usually as large or as dangerous as those which 

 infest tidal and brackish streams ; nevertheless there is always 

 some risk of meeting with an ugly customer, even in an in- 

 land lagoon. 



Having expressed a belief in the existence of three 

 varieties of crocodiles in Lower or Southern Bengal and in 

 Orissa, I will briefly describe them as they have presented 

 themselves to me, without touching upon their correct or 

 scientific designations. 



The largest and the most ferocious by far are the huge 

 monsters to be found only at the mouths of the great rivers, 

 and in the brackish waters of the countless creeks of the 

 " Soonderbuns," where they are very abundant, and attain to 

 the length of twenty-five feet, or even more ; but the largest 

 ever seen by me was twenty-four, and it looked, as it lay 

 basking on the sloping river-bank, like an overturned boat of 

 some size. Their distinguishing characteristics are the com- 

 parative shortness and great breadth of the skull, enormous 

 bulk of body, and a marked preference for salt or brackish 

 waters, from which they rarely ascend far up. This is a truly 

 dreadful monster, a desperate man -hunter and man-eater, 

 when it has acquired a taste for such prey, and its strength is 

 so prodigious as to enable it to draw down even a bull buffalo 

 if seized near deep water. The general colour of this great 

 saurian is a dull greenish grey; the parts exposed to the 

 bright glare of the sun glisten and look quite pale, while 

 those in shadow appear almost black, or at least a dark slate 

 colour. It has a habit, in common with the rest of the 

 species, of lying asleep with jaws widely distended; but I 

 cannot say that I have ever noticed any small birds serving it 

 in the capacities of toothpick or tooth-brush. Silently glid- 

 ing with the tide of some deep " Soonderbun " creek about 

 sunset, I have seen this monster rise suddenly to the surface 

 near my boat with a large fish across its jaws, which it has 

 thrown up in the air, and caught again in its mouth as it fell 

 head downwards, and then sink with a prodigious sweep of 



