550 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



tied around, them without slipping off. The upper jaw is 

 narrower than the lower, and the canines of the latter 

 extend through holes in the former, so that the ends of 

 those teeth protrude above the upper jaw. However, as I 

 know little of the Crocodile, I will say nothing more, but 

 proceed with an intimate acquaintance, Alligator Missis- 

 sippiensis, more commonly known as '"Gator." 



As with all animal life, he begins as an egg, and like most 

 reptiles, his external existence as such is in the form of a 

 pretty, white, and hard-shelled egg, much harder than that 

 of the domestic hen, about three inches in length, and one- 

 half as wide. The nest is composed of vegetation and 

 earth, piled a foot or two high and from four to five feet in 

 diameter, in the, center of which are laid, sometimes, as 

 many as seventy -five eggs, which are covered with earth 

 and hatched by the heat of the sun; the mother meantime 

 carefully guards them from depredators. 



"When hatched, the young are six or seven inches in 

 length, and in spite of their reptilian characteristics, have a 

 decidedly infantile appearance. In order to get a plentiful 

 supply of tadpoles and small fish, and to escape their affec- 

 tionate papas, who, it is said, love them, alas ! only too 

 well, the mother then takes them to some secluded nursery, 

 perhaps a hole in a small creek, or a wet place in a swamp, 

 where, if the water be low, she digs a hole, beneath the 

 surface, into which she and her young may retire. What 

 their period of growth or attainable age is, I do not know, 

 but they sometimes reach a length of fifteen feet and a 

 probable weight of four hundred pounds. 



With the appearance of the ' Gator, all are acquainted — 

 his immensely elongated jaws, armed with a hundred teeth; 

 long, dark, and knotty reptilian head; brown, cat-pupiled 

 eyes, that in the heat of anger burn with such dark ferocity, 

 and say, only too plainly, "No quarter here;" no external 

 ear, but an aperture covered with a valve-like flap, to keep 

 the water out; round neck; rather small and short legs; 

 body swelling from just back of the fore legs to the center 

 and then decreasing to the hinder legs; a heavily muscled 



