154 DE. J. E. UEAT'S 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 in a 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 31 inches, its width in front of the orbit 

 2^ 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 C. frontatws ; 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 Paiis Museum in such abundance as to part with the skeleton of it as a 

 duplicate, it is not included as Alligator ixilpehrosits, or under any name, in M. 

 Auguste Dumeril's List of the Reptiles of West Africa, printed in the last volume of the 

 Archives du Museum of Paris. 



This Crocodile has very much the external appearance of the Caiman with bony 

 eyelids, Crocodilus jmlpehrosus, 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," for 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 a jia^ipieres 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. 



