OF RECENT CROCODILIANS. 159 
Museum of the College of Surgeons a dried specimen of a Crocodile.” This he 
describes and figures under the name of “Crocodile & nuque cuirassée” (Crocodilus 
cataphractus, nob.). 
In 1834 Mr. Edward Turner Bennett (Proc. Zool. Soc. ii. p. 10) gave a notice of a 
specimen of Crocodilus cataphractus of Cuvier being alive in the gardens of this Society. 
At the meeting of the Society on the 22nd September, 1835 (Proc. Zool. Soe. iii. p. 129), 
after the animal had died, on more close examination, he described this animal as a new 
species, under the name of Crocodilus leptorhynchus; and Mr. Martin added some notes 
on its internal anatomy. 
It is to be observed that Mr. Bennett and I were misled on this occasion by the 
erroneous breadth given to the animal in the figure published by Cuvier ; for he speaks 
of the length of the head “being to its breadth as 3 to 1,” instead of as 23 to 1. 
In my Catalogue of the Tortoises, Crocodiles, and Amphibians in the Collection of 
the British Museum, published in 1844, I formed a genus under the name Mecistops 
for this animal, and for the first time described a full-grown specimen of it which we 
had received from the Gambia as MW. bennetti; for Mr. Rendal considered it distinct 
from Cuvier’s animal, but observed that they might be varieties. 
This might all have been avoided if we could have seen the original specimen ; but 
when I inquired for it, it could not be found. i 
The specimen described and figured by Cuvier is fortunately now to be seen in the 
Museum of the College of Surgeons, referred to under No. 710 in the Catalogue of 
Osteological Specimens of that collection. It is a young dried specimen of the Crocodile 
which is now so frequently brought from the west coast of Africa, and it affords no 
ground for the supposition of M. Duméril, expressed in his paper ‘“‘ On the Reptiles of 
Western Africa” (Arch. du Mus. v. 252), that these may be distinct species; and it 
shows that the figure of Cuvier, though characteristic, is not very carefully drawn, and 
that any difference that may appear results from the want of accuracy in the figure, and 
is not to be found in the animal itself,—supporting the opinion that I expressed in my 
paper in the ‘ Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ 5rd series, x. p. 274. 
M. Auguste Duméril, in his paper “ On the Reptiles of Western Africa” (Archiv. du 
Mus. x. 271), gives a good figure of a half-grown specimen of this species under the 
name of Crocodilus leptorhynchus, t.14, and places by the side of it a tracing of Cuvier’s 
figure of Crocodilus cataphractus, to show that they cannot be alike; but the 
entertainment. During the dinner the news arrived that the Orleans party had succeeded; he and his step- 
daughter, Miss Duvaucel (who was in the gallery with some ladies), immediately displayed the national 
colours. Cuyier’s political predilections were not strong; for he had held office under Napoleon and under the 
Bourbons, and he made no secret that he came provided so as to acknowledge the success of either party : 
he had a white and a tricolour cockade in his hat ready to show as the occasion required. When I visited 
him in after times, he more than once referred to the events of his visits. 
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