192 CLASS REPTILIA. 



grossest extravagance and absurdity. This remark, thougli 

 not very complimentary to our species, is unfortunately but 

 too well founded in truth. Thus respecting the crocodile a 

 number of absurd fancies were most implicitly believed. It 

 was supposed, for instance, to have had no tongue — to have 

 had as many teeth as there are days in the year. It was 

 imagined that there were certain times and places in which 

 it ceased to be dangerous. If any one had had the hardihood 

 to maintain that a crocodile had attacked an Egyptian, 

 though even on the Nile and in a bark of papyrus, he would 

 have run a narrow risk of being stoned as a blasphemer. 



It is supposed that one reason why the ancient Egyptians 

 venerated this animal, was, that the fear of the crocodiles 

 arrested the course of the Lybian and Arabian robbers, who, 

 but for these reptiles, would have been continually passing 

 and repassing the river and its canals. 



The Indians of Timor, of Java, of Ceram, of Sumatra, 

 and of the majority of the Sunda Islands, believe that when 

 their women lie-in, they bring into the world a little croco- 

 dile, a twin of their human infant, and that the midwife 

 receives this animal with the utmost care, and carries it im- 

 mediately to the river. The family take care to provide 

 aliment for their amphibious relation, and the twin goes, 

 particularly at certain epochs of his life, to perform this fra- 

 ternal duty, and that under pain of being struck by disease 

 or death in case of omission. At Celebes and Bantam many 

 of the inhabitants rear and feed crocodiles in their houses. 



In the year 58 before Christ, the edile Scaurus exhibited 

 at Rome five crocodiles of the Nile, and subsequently the 

 Emperor Augustus had the Flavinian circus filled with 

 water, and exhibited there to the people thirty-six crocodiles, 

 which were killed by an equal number of men, who were 

 habituated to fight with these animals. 



In 1681, a living crocodile was brought to the menagerie 



