MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 153 



Again, in Hamilton's account of the East Indies, 1688 to 1723, referring to 

 Java, he says : — 



They have many large crocodiles or alligators in their rivers and marshes, and sometimes 

 they go a mile or two off to sea, and get foul of the fishers' nets. I was cleaning a vessel 

 that I bought at Samarang on a bed of ooze, and had stages fitted for my people to stand 

 on, when the water came round the vessel, and we were plagued with five or six alligators 

 which wanted to be on the stage, and every moment disturbed our men ; so I and two of my 

 men sat on the vessel's deck, and fired muskets at them, but our ball did them no barm 

 because their hard scaly coat was shot proof. At last we contrived to shoot at their eyes 

 and we shot at one so. As soon as he found himself wounded, he turned tail on us, and 

 with great flouncings, made towards the shore about half a mile from us, and, the rest fol- 

 lowing him, we were pretty quiet after that. A day or two after, some fishers fold ns that 

 they had seen a dead alligator lying on the shore, and pointed whereabout they saw him. 

 I went in a boat ashore, and found him lying at full length. I measured his length, and 

 found from his nose to his tail twenty-seven feet and a half, and he was about one-third 

 part of his length in circumference about the belly. 



It is curious that the old writers— and, indeed, for that matter some of 

 those of the present day — contend that the scales of the crocodile are strong 

 enough to deflect a bullet ; this I have never found to be the case, and have 

 known them to be killed by the "380 rook rifle with its " pinch" of powder. 

 They have wonderful vitality, and, unless killed outright, succeed in getting 

 into the water, and do not float for about twenty-four hours. The neck is 

 undoubtedly the most vital spot, and, even if the vertebras are not touched, 

 the bullet paralyses them for the time. This happened to me with the last 

 crocodile I shot, which was 8 feet long ; the bullet hit it in the neck, and we 

 were able to lash it to a bamboo, and transport it alive over a twenty-four 

 hours' journey to enable me to get it stuffed. 



In India there are three crocodiles ; first, there is the gavial or garial (Gavialis 

 gangeticus),. It is called garial from the fact that the old males are- distin- 

 guished by an excrescence on the end of the snout, and which resembles the 

 earthen gara or pot used by the natives. It is supposed that the name gavial 

 was given owing to a clerical error, the letter r being mistaken for a v. There 

 is no mistaking the species, which has an extremely elongated snout, twenty- 

 seven or more teeth in each side of the upper jaw, and the nuchal and dorsal 

 scutes forming a single continuous shield composed of twenty-one or twenty- 

 two transverse series. 



In the old males, but not in the females or young, there is a large carti- 

 laginous lump on the extremity of the snout, which is supposed to contain 

 air to enable them to remain under water for a longer period than would 

 otherwise be possible. 



The garial does not attack human beings, but it has been found feeding on 

 a decomposed body. Its usual diet is fish. The habitat of this crocodile is 

 the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmapootra rivers and their large tributaries, also 

 the Mahanadi of Orissa and the Koladyne river in Arrakan. Personally, I 

 am not quite sure that it is the true garial which is found in Arrakan, as there 

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