Capture and Death of a large Alligator. 319 



legs entire, torn off at the haunch and shoulder, which he had 

 swallowed whole, besides a large quantity of stones, some of 

 them of several pounds weight. 



The night, which had become very dark and stormy, prevented 

 us from being minute in our investigation ; and leaving direc- 

 tions to preserve the bones and skin, we took the head with us 

 and returned home. This precaution was induced by the anxiety 

 of the natives to secure the teeth ; and I afterwards found that 

 they attribute to them miraculous powers in the cure or preven- 

 tion of diseases. 



The head weighed near three hundred pounds ; and so well 

 was it covered with flesh and muscle, that we found balls quite 

 flattened which had been discharged into the mouth and at the 

 back of the head, at only the distance of a few feet, and yet the 

 bones had not a single mark to show that they had been touched. 



I would observe, that the head, as it now appears, conveys a 

 feeble impression of its size before it was divested of its integu- 

 ments. 



I returned shortly after to Manilla, and expected to have been 

 followed by the bones and skin of the alligator. They were 

 drying on a scafl"old, near the place where he was killed, when a 

 typhon, or hurricane, of unexampled severity, which laid low the 

 cabin of the Indian and the tree of the forest, and covered the 

 shores of the lake with the bodies of man, and beast, and fish, 

 swept away the platform and whirled into the lake or the jungle, 

 every fragment of our victim. 



The head was an object of great curiosity at Manilla, nothing 

 of similar size having been seen there ; and on a visit which I 

 subsequently made to Europe, I examined, with some attention, 

 the museums of natural history, particularly those of France and 

 England, without finding any thing of equal magnitude. 



While the head was at Manilla, an English frigate arrived there 

 that had been long on the East India station. The ofiicers had, 

 at Ceylon, killed an alligator of extraordinary size, the skeleton 

 of which they intended to send to the British Museum. They 

 expressed however their disinclination to do so, after seeing that 

 from Halahala, which was much larger than the one they had 

 taken. 



In comparing notes with them respecting the nature and habits 

 of this animal, I was struck with the similarity of the supersti- 



