196 FOSSIL REPTILES. 



raised them to the rank of deities, for by that was arrested the 

 progress of the Arab and Libyan robbers, who, but for the cro- 

 codiles, would have been passing and repassing the Nile and 

 its canals incessantly. Diodorus especially mentions this, 

 among other reasons, and Cicero, before him, states it in the 

 plainest language: " jEgyptii nullam helluam nisi ah aliquam 

 utilitatem consecraverunt ; crocodilum^ quod terrore arceat 

 latrones.^^ 



A strange passage of Damascius, a Greek writer of the 

 Lower Empire, quoted by Photius, has given rise to the opi- 

 nion of Jablonski and Larcher. His words are : 



*0 l9r7ro9r6rapcos- a^txov l^uov ; 6 ^Z%os (or more properly Saxts") 



" The hippopotamus is unjust; the suchis is just: it has the 

 name and figure of the crocodile : it hurts no animal." 



The explanation of this is very simple. In the time of Da- 

 mascius, who lived under Justinian, the Pagans were perse- 

 cuted, and sacred animals were no longer reared in Egypt. 

 Nothing remained of the ancient worship but in tradition 

 and the reports of books. Damascius was, from all that is 

 known of him, evidently a very ignorant and credulous man. 

 He had read or heard that the suchis, or sacred crocodile of 

 Arsinoe, was harmless, and he immediately sets it down as an 

 innocent and peculiar species. This explanation is sufficient, 

 if we translate the word si^o^ species ; but the signification of 

 this word is ambiguous, and the mode in which it is used by 

 this author is not calculated to fix the sense. We have thought 

 proper to translate it in its original and natural acceptation, in 

 which we are fully convinced it was employed by Damascius. 

 It is, moreover, evident that the suchis, even supposing that it 

 was a weaker kind of crocodile, must have been carnivorous. 

 To say, therefore, that it did no injury to any animal, is false 

 and absurd, and such an error ought to deprive the passage in 

 question of all credit. 



The second species established by the Baron is the double- 



