4 THE EEPTILES OF EGYPT. 
in length, and he believed that the mildness of disposition attributed to the suchus by 
Damascius J was really the outcome of its weak jaws. 
GeofTroy makes no mention of the differences in the form of the head of the two 
sexes, except in one passage, in which he says that his guides assured him that they 
could distinguish the sexes by their heads, and even by the impress left by them on 
the sands, as the head of the male was heavier and broader than that of the female. 
These characters are well marked, and not only has the male crocodile a heavier and 
broader head as a whole than the female, but the snout also is broader and less 
elongate. 
The characters which he supposed distinguished C. suchus from C. niloticus were, 
that the former had its nasal bones forming a gentle eminence throughout their length, 
that they were proportionally narrower than in C. niloticus, that a groove lay along 
their external borders, and that the upper surface of the head was smooth, while in 
G. niloticus it was rugose. All of these characters, however, when a large series of 
skulls is examined, are to be explained either by sex, difference of age, or individual 
peculiarity. He recognized that, in the form of its scales generally, C. suchus was 
closely allied to C. niloticus, and that the colours in the two were much the same, but 
he held that in C. suchus the nuchals were always longer than broad. The nuchals, 
however, of the crocodile of the Nile vary considerably in their length, breadth, and 
distribution, so that no importance can be attached to the trivial variation indicated 
by GeofTroy. Another feature in which Geoffroy says C. suchus differed from 
C. niloticus was the greater length of its tail. In connection with this it is interesting 
to find that John Antes 2 , who was resident in Egypt from 1770 to 1782, wrote as 
follows : — "I observed two sorts of crocodiles, though I question whether the difference 
did not consist in the sex only. The one is, in proportion of its thickness, rather 
longer than the other, but it consists more in the tail." 3 Geoffroy, however, thought 
that John Antes's observation favoured his view as to the presence of two species of 
crocodiles. 
Cuvier regarded GeofFroy's C. suchus as possibly a variety of the Nile crocodile, on 
the ground that its head was more flattened and more elongate than that of C. niloticus, 
and because he had two entire individuals the heads of which presented the same 
characters. Besides the differences in the form of the head, the specimens referred to 
the variety were also said by Cuvier to be distinguished by their colours. On these 
grounds, and from the circumstance that Geoffroy had been told by the fisherman of the 
1 Damascius lived in the 6th century, long after the cult of the crocodile had become extinct, so that 
anything he has to say on the subject was derived from tradition, and, moreover, he was ignorant and 
credulous. 
2 Observ. on the Manners and Customs of the Egyptians (1800, 4to), p. 83. 
3 He further remarks : " of this sort were all those which I have seen in the museums of Florence, London, 
and some other towns in Europe." 
