422 ALLIGATORS. 
The Common ALLIGATOR inhabits Northern America, and is plentifully 
found in the Mississippi, the lakes and rivers of Louisiana and Carolina, 
and similar localities. It is a fierce and dangerous reptile, in many of its 
habits bearing a close resemblance to the crocodiles and the other members 
of the family. 
Unlike the crocodile, however, it avoids the salt water, and is but seldom 
seen even near the mouths of rivers, where the tide gives a brackish taste to 
their waters, It is mostly a fish-eater, haunting those portions of the rivers 
where its prey most abounds, and catching them by diving under a passing 
shoal, snapping up one or two victims as it passes throush them, tossing 
them in the air for the purpose of ejecting the water which has necessarily 
filled its mouth, catching them adroitly as they fall, and then swallowing 
them. 
The eggs of the Alligator are small and numerous. The parent deposits 
them in the sand of the river side, scratching a hole with her paws, and placing 
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SCALY LIZARD.—(Zoo/oca vivipara.) 
the eggs in a regular layer therein. She then scrapes some sand, dry 
leaves, grass, and mud over them, smoothes it, and deposits a second laycr 
upon them. These eggs are then covered in a similar manner, and another 
layer deposited until the mother reptile has laid from fifty to sixty eggs. 
Although they are hatched by the heat of the sun and the decaying vege- 
table matter, the mother does not desert her young, but leads them to the 
water and takes care of them until their limbs are sufficiently strong and 
their scales sufficiently firm to permit them to roam the waters without 
assistance. 
During the winter months the Alligator buries itself in the mud, but a very 
little warmth is sufficient to make it quit its retreat and come into the open 
air again. While lively, especially at night, it is a most noisy animal, bellow- 
ing in so loud a tone and in so singular a cadence that even the nightly 
concert of jaguars and monkeys is hardly heard when the Alligators are 
roaring. 
It caraeelties attains to a great size, and is then formidable to man. Mr. 
Waterton mentions a case where one of these creatures was seen to rush out 
