THE GANGETIC CEOCODILE. 53 



must have been from fifteen to eighteen feet in length, or even 

 more. To my chagrin and disappointment I found after two or 

 three trials that a single bullet from my little Maynard rifle (cali- 

 bre .40, larger calibres are made now), had not weight and force 

 enough to shatter the spinal-column of a seventeen-foot crocodile 

 at one hundred and fifty yards. Had I possessed a heavj' rifle of 

 the same accuracy as my Maynard, we should have accounted for 

 two or three of them at least. 



Once I found an old monster, beside which a ten-foot ga\T.al 

 seemed entirely insignificant, sunning himself upon an isolated bar 

 in the middle of the river. I ofiered my men a i-upee each if we 

 secured him, and fired at his neck. At the first shot his jaws flew 

 open, he lay quite still, and my men instantly plunged into the 

 river. I quickly reloaded and fired two more shots to make mat- 

 ters more sure, but in my eagerness and haste they must have 

 missed the \ital spot, for when the old monster saw my boatmen 

 surging madly through the water straight toward him, he j^ut forth 

 all his strength, slid slowly down the sand into the river and disap- 

 peared. It was a bitter disappointment to us all, for we knew we 

 should never see him again. Although during that tiip we shot a 

 number of gavials which must have died in the water, not one of 

 them ever came to the surface afterward. One small one, however, 

 did deliberately come out upon a bank and die there, the only in- 

 stance of the kind I ever saw. 



Pliny states that if turmeric be fired into a crocodile's body he 

 will come out upon the sand to die, so Major Ross sent me his. 

 express rifle, and some tiu'meric, for me to make the experiment. 

 I filled some explosive bullets with it instead of detonating powder 

 and fired them at gavials, but none of them ever came out of the 

 water after they had once got into it. I have heard of jDarties of 

 mighty hunters shooting " one hundred and twenty-eight alligatoi-s 

 a week in the St. Johns," and even of a hundred " shot " in a day ; 

 but be it remembered that these alligators were only shot at. 

 There is a w^orld of difference between shooting (at) a crocodile 

 and securing it, and when your mighty hunter boasts of the great 

 number he " shot," ask him how many he got. 



In the museum at Allahabad is a fine skeleton of a male gavial 

 which measures 17 feet in length as it stands. If we allow for the 

 shortening of the skeleton which has undoubtedly taken place in 

 mounting and drying, I think we may safely say that the ani- 

 mal when alive was 17 feet, 8 inches in length. In the Jardin 



