44 The Alligator and Its Allies 
man, to whom it is seldom or never dangerous. 
Its Indian name, gharial, from which its generic 
name has been corrupted, means fish-eater, since 
its food consists, it is said, largely if not entirely 
of fish. 
Considering its huge size and the character of 
its jaws and teeth as shown in Figures 13 and 14, 
it is fortunate that it prefers fish to human flesh. 
Anderson (2) describes the eggs and young of the 
Indian gavial. He found forty eggs in a nest of 
sand; they were in two layers, with a foot of sand 
between them. The young were 15.8 inches long 
at hatching. He says: “The young run with 
amazing rapidity the moment they are out of the 
shell. . . . Some of them actually bit my fingers 
before I had time to remove the shell from their 
bodies.”” The following quotation from Oldenburg 
(46), for which I am indebted to Dr. Hussakof, 
is perhaps the earliest reference to the egg of the 
American alligator. It also mentions the habit 
that is practiced by some of the recent Crocodilia 
of swallowing stones to aid in digestion, as was 
apparently done by some of the large extinct 
reptiles. 
“The eggs of Crocodiles and Alligators are little 
bigger than a Turkey’s. I thought to bring one to 
England, but it was lost. I never broke any to 
see the Yolk and White; but the Shell is as firme 
and like in shape to a Turkey’s, but not spotted. 
I inquired into the Stone in the Stomach of a 
