36 The Alligator and Its Allies 
second piece had disappeared what he had been 
eating. It always seemed strange to me that the 
poor people of the South should not more often 
vary the monotony of fat pork and corn bread 
with alligator steaks. Whether the meat could be 
smoked or salted so that it would keep in a hot 
climate I do not know; I am not aware of any 
experiments along this line. 
THE CHINESE ALLIGATOR 
Beside the American form, Alligator mississip- 
piensis, the only other species of alligator is found 
in China, along the Yang-tse-Kiang River; it is 
Alligator sinensis. It reaches a length of six feet 
and externally resembles its American relative; 
it is greenish black above speckled with yellow; 
grayish below. 
THE CAIMAN 
This is the nearest relative of the alligator and 
is found in Central America and tropical South 
America. As seen by the table on page 2, it is 
usually a small animal, though one species, the 
black caiman, is said to reach a length of twenty 
feet (Fig. 10). The nasal bones do not form a 
bony septum as in the alligator and the ventral 
armor consists of overlapping bony scutes. The 
canine teeth of the lower jaw fit into a pit in the 
upper jaw, as in the alligator. 
