154 DR. J. E. GRAYS SYNOPSIS OF THE SPECIES 
Black, slightly mottled with pale whitish. Head pale olive, black dotted; sides of 
lower jaw black-banded; muzzle broad, oblong, trigonal, rather dilated on the sides; 
forehead high, broad, and flat, with a small tubercle at the front angle of the orbit. 
Nuchal shields strongly keeled, two ina cross line in two groups. Cervical shields six, in 
three pairs, all close together, the two anterior pairs of equal size, large, strongly keeled, 
and bent in on the outer sides, the hinder pairs much smaller. ‘The vertebral series of 
dorsal shield broad, square, scarcely keeled, with one, and in the front of the back two 
rows of oval, elongated, keeled shields on the side of them, and a few isolated, scattered, 
compressed, high, tubercular-like, small, ovate shields on the sides of the body. Shields 
of the upper arm oblong, trigonal, keeled, in six oblique cross series. The lines of the 
upper jaw sinuous, three-parted, the front with five, the second with seven, and the 
hinder with five teeth. 
The largest specimen I have seen is in the Free Museum at Liverpool, which is 
nearly 5 feet long, but I have no doubt it grows larger. The muzzle of this specimen 
from the tip of the nose to the orbit is 33 inches, its width in front of the orbit 
25 inches, and at the notch of the canine teeth 1} inch. The eyelid is obliquely 
divided from the front of the orbit to the back of the eye. 
The Black African Crocodiles appear to be a common species on the west coast of 
Africa; for they are often brought to the Port of Liverpool by the palm-oil ships, and 
frequently in a living state; indeed I am informed there were some lately alive in the 
Society's Gardens in the Regent’s Park. 
Mr. Andrew Murray, at my recommendation, has described it in the ‘ Proceedings’ of 
the Society as a new species of Crocodile under the name of @. Frontatus; for at that 
instant it did not occur to me that it might be the Black Crocodile of Adanson, noticed 
as an Alligator. It is to be observed that, though they have specimens of this 
Crocodile in the Paris Museum in such abundance as to part with the skeleton of it asa 
duplicate, it is not included as. Alligator palpebrosus, or under any name, in M. 
Auguste Duméril’s List of the Reptiles of West Africa, printed in the last volume of the 
Archives du Muséum of Paris. 
This Crocodile has very much the external appearance of the Caiman with bony 
eyelids, Crocodilus palpebrosus, Cuvier; and I think it very likely that Cuvier mistook a 
specimen of it in the Paris Museum, which Adanson had marked with his own hand 
* Krokodile noir du Niger,” tor a specimen of that species. (See Cuvier, Oss. Foss. iii. 
p- 41.) And it is still confounded with that species by the French naturalists; for there 
is a skeleton in the British Museum, lately sent from M. Braconier, of the French 
Museum, under the name of Caiman & paupiéres osseuses. 
Adanson, in his ‘ Voyage to Senegal,’ at p. 10, mentions the occurrence of Crocodiles, 
and at p. 73 a second kind of Crocodile, which is as large as the other, and distin- 
guished by the black colour and by the jaws being much more elongated. It is more 
carnivorous, and said to be fond of human flesh. 
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