CEOCODILUS NILOTICUS. 11 
one of the plates of the anterior row has been suppressed. In every case a few keeled 
plates of varying size are arranged around the posterior nuchals, and in one instance 
an additional pair of plates occurs, giving rise to the formula I. 
The first row of dorsal plates is generally well defined and follows the formula 3 + 8, 
but instances occur in which some of the dorsal plates in this row are not developed 
in continuous transverse series. These plates, notwithstanding this abnormality, I have 
regarded as dorsal. 
The statements made by travellers and other observers regarding the length of the 
crocodile of the Nile are most varied. In an Egyptian tale 1 , as old as the fourth 
dynasty, we learn that a crocodile seven cubits long merited the term " great " being 
applied to it. Herodotus, on the other hand, gives seventeen cubits as the length ; 
whereas iElian 2 affirms that during the reign of Psammetichus one had been seen 
25 cubits, and another, in the time of Amasides, 26 cubits of four spans each. Abd- 
Allatif 3 , a celebrated Arab physician and traveller of Baghdad, who arrived in Egypt 
about 1190 A.D. and taught medicine and philosophy at Cairo for a few years, mentions 
that some crocodiles attained to 20 cubits ; whereas Marmol 4 , who was in Egypt in 
the middle of the sixteenth century, speaks of crocodiles only 10 cubits long. 
Prospero Alpini 5 , physician to the Consul for the Venetian Republic in Egypt from 
1581 to 1583, states that the crocodile attained to 30 cubits in length, but, in doing so, 
he was evidently repeating the exaggerated statements of the natives. Wansleben 6 , 
who was in Egypt about a century later, records that he had heard that the largest 
crocodile did not exceed 12 cubits. Pococke 7 , who visited the country in the fourth 
decade of the eighteenth century, mentions that he met with specimens from 15 to 20 
feet long ; whereas Hasselquist 8 , who was in Lower Egypt a few years later on, says 
that some eggs that had been brought to him were from a female 30 cubits in length ; 
but as he apparently did not see the specimen, he was merely repeating what had 
been told him by the natives. Denon 9 , the French Academician, estimated the 
length of one he saw at Denclerah to be 15 to 18 feet, whereas, at Keneh, he saw 
some 28 feet in length, whilst another was reported to be 40 feet long 10 . Sonnini u 
1 Egyptian Tales translated from the Papyri by Prof. F. Petrie. 1st ser. p. 12. 
2 De Nat. Anim. xvii. 6. 
3 Relation de l'Egypte, transl. by de Saey, 1810, p. 140. 
4 Description de Africa, 1573, lib. i. cap. 23. 
6 Eerum iEgypt. lib. iv. cap. 5 (Lugd. Bat. 1735, 4to), p. 218. 
6 The Present State of Egypt (1672-73), 1678, p. 46. 
7 Descr. of the East, i. (1743) p. 114. 
" Iter Palssst. 1757, p. 296. 
9 Voy. dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte (1798-1799), 1802, i. p. 140. 
10 Op. cit. p. 208. 
11 Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, 1798, iii. p. 298. 
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