CHAP. XVIII.] ALLIGATOR S NEST AND HABITS. 251 



have allowed us to approach so near to him ; for these reptiles 

 are much shyer than formerly, since they have learnt to dread 

 the avenging rifle of the planter, whose stray hogs and sporting 

 dogs they often devour. About ten years ago, Mr. Couper tells 

 us, that he saw 200 of them together in St. Mary s River, in 

 Florida, extremely fearless. The oldest and largest individuals 

 on the Altamaha have been killed, and they are now rarely 

 twelve feet long, and never exceed sixteen and a half feet. As 

 almost all of them have been in their winter retreats ever since 

 the frost of last month, I was glad that we had surprised one in 

 his native haunts, and seen him plunge into the water by the 

 side of our boat. When I first read Bartram s account of alli 

 gators more than twenty feet long, and how they attacked his 

 boat and bellowed like bulls, and made a sound like distant 

 thunder, I suspected him of exaggeration ; but all my inquiries 

 here and in Louisiana convinced me that he may be depended 

 upon. His account of the nests which they build in the marshes 

 is perfectly correct. They resemble haycocks, about four feet 

 high, and five feet in diameter at their bases, being constructed 

 with mud, grass, arid herbage. First they deposit one layer of 

 eggs on a floor of mortar, and having covered this with a second 

 stratum of mud and herbage eight inches thick, lay another set 

 of eggs upon that, and so on to the top, there being commonly 

 from one hundred to two hundred eggs in a nest. With their 

 tails they then beat down round the nest the dense grass and 

 reeds, five feet high, to prevent the approach of unseen enemies. 

 The female watches her eggs until they are all hatched by the 

 heat of the sun, and then takes her brood under her care, de 

 fending them, and providing for their subsistence.* Dr. Luzen- 

 berger, of New Orleans, told me that he once packed up one of 

 these nests, with the eggs, in a box for the Museum of St. Peters- 

 burgh, but was recommended, before he closed it, to see that there 

 was no danger of any of the eggs being hatched on the voyage. 

 On opening one, a young alligator walked out, arid was soon after 

 followed by all the rest, about a hundred, which he fed in his house, 

 where they went up and down the stairs, whining and barking 

 * Bartram, p. 126, 



