642 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIII, 
them is perhaps worth noting, and thatis the point of aim: This 
should be the bones of the neck, anywhere in front of the shoulders. 
If you succeed in smashing the vertebral column with your bullet, his 
jaws will fly open and he will lie still, paralysed ; but lose no time in 
running up to get hold of him by the tail, for he may soon ‘come to’ 
sufficiently only to disappear in the watery depths to be seen no 
more. Should your bullet strike him anywhere else,—even if it inflicts 
a mortal wound,—he will still probably be abie to get beyond your 
reach by struggling to the water, and it is not the nature of the beast 
to trust himself far from the edge as a rule, except at night, when, 
they stray some distance from the water in search of food. It is also 
possible, of course, to catch them with a baited line, but the rifle is 
the readiest means, and any one anxious to try the sport of fishing for 
them, I would refer to the account that Mr. Hornaday gives of his 
experiences in ‘Two Years in the Jungle.” 
Having secured the beast, the first procedure, as in the case of all 
vertebrates, will be to measure your victim and carefully record the 
dimensions. The most important measurement in this case is the total 
length, from snout to tip of tail, which cau be supplemented by that of 
the tail alone and the girth behind the shoulders. All but the very 
smallest specimens must, of course, be skinned, which operation 
does not materially differ from that of the larger mammals. Mr. 
Hornaday thus describes the process of curing the skin after removal : 
‘© When the skin is thoroughly clean, immerse it in a strong bath of 
salt and water, and allow it to remain twenty-four to thirty hours. 
Then take it out, rub the inside and the leg-bones thoroughly with 
strong arsenical soap, after which apply powdered burnt alum liberally 
over the inner surface, so that not a single spot is missed. Then hang 
the skin up by the head (no danger of stretching in this case ), and 
allow it to dry in the wind and shade.” 
Small specimens, or the skins of moderate sized ones, can be preserv- 
ed by immersion in spirits, as described below in the case of the smaller 
reptiles. 
Tortoises and Turtles ( Chelonia ). Of these we have a far greater 
variety than in the case of the crocodiles, amounting to 43 species 
according to Mr. G. A. Boulanger’s velume of the “ Fauna of British 
India.” Excellent Manual as this is, so far as concerns the scientific 
