1 86 CLARKE. [Vol. V. 



fourteen feet, and a female ten feet and eight inches long. Both 

 of these were found in Arch Creek, a tributary of Biscayne Bay, 

 Florida. He also found two skulls, and secured a small stuffed 

 crocodile fourteen and a half inches long. H. A. Ward of 

 Rochester, New York, had a crocodile from Lake Worth, 

 Florida, about ninety miles north of Biscayne, which measures 

 nine feet and ten inches. Hornaday says that the specimens 

 from Arch Creek are between C. acutits and C. rJwmbifcr, and 

 proposes for them the name of C. Floridanns. Yarrow (33), in 

 his check list of 1882, gives only one species of crocodile, C. 

 Americanus, Seba. 



I made three trips to Florida before I succeeded in getting 

 any considerable number of eggs, obstacles, and hindrances of 

 many kinds having been placed in my way. On the last trip I 

 was accompanied by my friend and former student, Mr. C. C. 

 Hayes, to whom I am indebted for many of the drawings for 

 this paper, including nearly all those from life, and also for his 

 faithful companionship through a long month of intense heat 

 and other hardships, with privations of many kinds. I would 

 gratefully acknowledge, also, my indebtedness to President Car- 

 ter and the Board of Trustees, for granting me the necessary 

 leave of absence from my college duties. 



To return now to the alligator. 



Egg-Laying. 



On the 9th of June, 1888, I found, after a long and laborious 

 search through many miles of Florida swamp, at a point about 

 fifteen miles from Fort Pierce, an alligator's nest containing 

 newly laid eggs. 



A second lot of eggs was gotten the next day by a hunter 

 who was at work for me some forty miles to the northward. 

 This second lot were taken from the oviducts of a gravid female, 

 and were just ready for laying, as the shell was fully formed. 



Old nests were to be found in abundance, and new nests were 

 also seen partly built or completed, but not as yet containing 

 eggs. It was evidently the beginning of the laying season, but 

 I was obliged to return at once, carrying with me the sixty eggs 

 which we had secured — twenty-nine from the nest and thirty- 

 one from Madame Alligator. The journey home, made with all 



