ALIGATORS AS TABLE LUXURIES. THE GUANA. 127 
Mr. McKinnen in his “Tour,” when speaking of his visit to 
Acklin’s Island in 1802-3, says: ‘‘ Alligators were sometimes 
brought in for the table, but it required considerable address to 
destroy them. The negroes, however, never display so much 
ingenuity or patience as in pursuit of prey. The flesh of an 
alligator which I tasted was hard, white and very much resembled 
the sturgeon’s.” We heard of no alligators at New Providence, 
and, as the Bahama Islands are destitute of rivers, we think it 
probable the alligators referred to had strayed away from their 
accustomed haunts, and that this huge reptile contributed little 
to the support of the ancient Lucayans. 
Lizards of small size are very common in New Providence. 
They are from six to twelve inches in length, and their ancestors 
could not here have very materially contributed to the mainte- 
nance of human life. But Mr. McKinnen, speaking of the con- 
dition of the island and their inhabitants in his own time, states, 
that ‘“‘the guana [iguana] of the lizard tribe is found in the 
holes in the rocks in all the islands. In the cultivated parts the 
guana soon disappears, as they is easily paler, and their flesh 
is much esteemed by the negroes.” 
Mr. Bryan Edwards, of the island of Jamaica, in his history 
of the West Indies, published in Dublin in 1793, says, concern- 
ing the island, that 
«‘The woods were peopled ith two very extraordinary creat- 
ures; both of which anciently were, and still are, not only used 
for food, but accounted superior delicacies. These are the iguana 
and the mountain crab.” The former “isa species of lizard— 
aclass of animals about which naturalists are not agreed whether 
to rank them with quadrupeds, or to degrade them to serpents. 
* * * From the alligator, the most formidable of the family, 
measuring sometimes twenty feet in length, the gradation is 
regular in diminution of size to the small lizard of three inches; 
