200 BEASTS AND MEN 
days and usually in the evening. After they had learnt to 
know this method of feeding I was able to carry them ona 
step further. A large piece of meat was fixed to the end of 
a wooden pole and the water stirred about with it until the 
alligators seized it. I approached ever nearer the basin, and 
after from four to six weeks some of the animals had become 
so far tamed that they would take food from my hand. But 
I always felt that they would gladly have taken the hand as 
well if they had been given the chance. No real friendship 
can be established between these savage reptiles and human 
beings. 
The smaller alligators, of three or four feet in length, 
which used to be kept in cages with glass fronts, can be tamed 
somewhat more quickly. It took me only about a week to 
teach these animals to come forward whenever I tapped on 
their glass windows, and take food out of my hand. The 
larger alligators are very voracious, and I have seen one nine 
feet long eat forty-eight pounds of meat at one meal. 
Young alligators grow well in captivity if they are pro- 
perly looked after. 1 should say that they reached their full 
development at the age of eighteen or twenty years. They 
are then about twelve feet long. I have never at any time 
seen one longer than this, though fourteen-feet specimens 
have been reported to have been shot. In the London 
Zoological Gardens a few years ago there was an animal 
eleven feet in length which had been bought eighteen years 
previously when only three feet long. 
The animals referred to above belong to the species of 
alligator known as Adiigator mussissipprensis, coming from 
the Southern States of America. I well remember the first 
consignment of these which we ever received. This was in 
1856. On hearing that the boat containing the animals had 
arrived, my father and I went on board to inspect them, and 
found there a miscellaneous collection of cages containing 
animals of all kinds. The owner demanded 4120 for the 
whole collection, but we finally beat him down to £90 and 
