THE ALLIGATOE: HABITS. 145 



which leads for thirty-three miles through Savannah's sand-hills and pine barrens from New 

 Smyrna, Florida, to the St. John's River," writes a correspondent of " Forest and Stream," " we once 

 came upon an alligator seven feet long, taking his siesta in the middle of the road. . . . 

 Many alligators have I seen in Florida lakes and rivers, but never before met one on the high 

 road. Probably the dry weather had drawn the reptile from its accustomed haunts in search of 

 water." ^ 



Voice. — In spring and during the breeding season Alligators utter a cry, which has been 

 likened to that of the bull-frog, but intensified, and to the noise of distant thunder. It is probably 

 to this cry that Bartram frequently refers, as, for example, in the following sentences : " But what is 

 yet most surprising to a stranger, is the incredible loud and terrifying roar which they are capable 

 of making, especially in the spring season, their breeding time; it most resembles very heavy 

 distant thunder, not only shaking the air and waters, but causing the earth to tremble; and 

 when hundreds and thousands are roaring at the same time, you can scarcely be persuaded but 

 that the whole globe is violently and dangerously agitated."^ Most evident hyperbole! 



HiBEENATiON. — At the approach of winter the Alligators embed themselves in holes and pits 

 on the banks of their favorite streams, and remain dormant until spring. 



Bebbding habits. — When the breeding season arrives, early in spring, the female resorts to 

 a sheltered spot on the bank of the stream, and constructs a small mound of mud and other materials, 

 in which she deposits her eggs, one to two hundred in number. The eggs hatch in about thirty 

 days, and the young Alligators immediately take to the water. Although I am loath to quote so 

 much from one observer, I must refer again to the narrative of Bartram, for I find no other in which 

 the nests of the Alligator are so fully described, with so great an appearance of accuracy. He 

 writes : 



"1 now lost sight of my enemy again. Still keeping close along shore; on turning a point or 

 projection of the river bank, at once I beheld a great number of hillocks or small pyramids, 

 resembling hay cocks, ranged like an encampment along the banks, they stood fifteen or twenty 

 yards distant from the water, on a high marsh about four feet perpendicular above the water ; I 

 knew them to be the nests of the Crocodile, having had a description of them before, and now 

 expected a furious and general attack, as I saw several large Crocodiles swimming abreast of 

 these buildings. 



" These nests being so great a curiosity to me, I was determined at all events immediately to 

 land and examine them. Accordingly I ran my bark on shore at one of their landing places, 

 which was a sort of nick or little dock, from which ascended a sloping path or road up to the edge 

 of the meadow, where their nests were; most of them were deserted, and the great thick whitish 

 eggshells lay broken and scattered upon the ground round about them. 



" The nests or hillocks are of the form of an obtuse cone, four feet high and four or five feet 

 in diameter at their bases; they are constructed with mud, grass, and herbage: at first they 

 lay a floor of this kind of tempered mortar on the ground, upon which they deposit a layer of 

 eggs, and upon this a stratum of mortar seven or eight inches in thickness, and then another 

 layer of eggs, and in this manner one stratum upon another, nearly to the top : I believe they 

 commonly lay from one to two hundred eggs in a nest : These are hatched I suppose by the heat 

 of the sun, and perhaps the vegetable substances mixed with the earth, being acted upon by the 

 sun, may cause a small degree of fermentation, and so increase the heat in those hillocks. The 

 ground for several acres about these nests shewed evident marks of a continual resort of alligators : 



10 P 



1" S. C. C." [S. C. Clakkb] iu Forest and Stream, xii, 1879, p. 307. 

 ^Bartram: op. oit., p. 129. 



