60 ALLIGATOR MISSISSIPPIENSIS. 



of all the creeks and rivers that empty into the Atlantic ocean, or into the Gulf 

 of Mexico, as far as New Orleans, ascending up the Mississippi as high as the 

 entrance of Red river, six hundred miles. Cuvier, in his "Memoire" on the 

 Crocodiles, says, "Cette espece (Lucius) va assez loin au Nord; elle rcmontc 

 le Mississippi jusque a la riviere rouge." 



Dumeril and Bibron give the Alligator a still wider range; they say it appa- 

 rently inhabits all parts of North America — "Qu'elle semble habitcr Aans toute 

 son etendue," — a striking proof of the inaccuracy of foreign herpetologists in 

 arranging the geographical limits of our reptiles. In fact, the Alligator is never 

 found north of lat. 35° on the Atlantic shore, and does not even reach the same 

 parallel on the Mississippi, but stops at 33° 50", the entrance of Red river — 

 and what is this to the whole extent of North America? It may safely be 

 affirmed, that nine-tenths of the territory of the United States east of the Rocky 

 momitains, is uninhabited by this reptile. 



General Remarks. Catesby first described this animal, and gave a tolerable 

 figure of it, under the name Alligator, in his "History of Carolina," &c. Linnaeus 

 next reviewed it in the twelfth edition of the "Systema Naturae," but he seems to 

 have regarded it but as a variety of the Nilotic crocodile, in which opinion he 

 was followed by many naturalists of that time. In fact, the elder herpetologists 

 "are in some degree excusable for their ignorance of the difiercnt species of 

 Crocodiles, for the specific characters applied to them were variable, and often 

 little accordant with nature." 



It is to Cuvier that we owe nearly all that is worth knowing on this subject; it 

 was he who first observed the differences of the Crocodiles of the old and new 

 world. In a "Memoire" read before the Institute of France, and afterwards 

 published in Wcidmann (Archiv. Zoot., b. ii. p. 161, Brunswick, 1801), he recog- 

 nised the peculiarly shaped head of the Alligator — "flat, and resembling that of the 

 pike" — and seems to have regarded it as distinct from the South American animal; 



