168 ON THE DERMAL ARMOUR OF CROCODILUS HASTINGSLE 
found two examples of this anterior moiety detached, one of which is 
represented in fig. 8. It exhibits the articular facet, the deep rounded 
sculpture pits of the other moiety of the flat scute, and the total 
absence of even the commencement of a ridge, characteristic of the 
corresponding part of the flat ventral scutes in /acare and Caiman, 
and, finally, its thick posterior edge presents distinct sutural teeth, in 
relation to which circumstance, I may remark that the scutes break 
with a smooth, sharp, transverse, fractured surface, totally unlike a 
sutural edge. 
If the two pieces which are figured fitted, instead of belonging, as 
I suspect they do, to opposite sides of the body, the resemblance of 
the entire bony plate to one of the ventral scutes of /acare would be 
most striking. 
The less angulated articulated scutes again are very similar to 
the dorsal scutes of /acare, and the more angulated ones to its 
cervical scutes ; those more angulated scutes, which are devoid of any 
articular facet, might have occupied the most anterior place in the 
series of cervical scutes, as such scutes, not being overlapped by 
others anteriorly, have no facet; and, finally, the flatter angulated 
scutes, without articular facets, may very probably have been situated 
along the extreme outer margin of the dorsal shield. 
But, though the positions assigned to these scutes may all be 
justified by the analogy of the existing Cazman or Jacare} it is also 
quite possible that the non-articulated scutes may have belonged to 
a different species from those which are articulated. 
I am strongly inclined, however, to the supposition that all the 
scutes belong to the same species, Crocodtlus Hastingsiw, and that 
this is the only Hordwell species of Crocodilian Reptile, the so-called 
Alligator Hantoniensis being in fact, as Professor Owen has suggested, 
only a variety of Croc. Hastingsie. 
In the general form and characters of the skull this Crocodile most 
nearly approaches the Crocodilus palustris or bombifrons, one of the 
two species of true Crocodile which inhabits the Ganges. Now in 
this Crocodile (as I have pointed out in the ‘Proceedings of the 
Linnean Society’ for 1859), the palate not only presents a straight 
premanillar mawnillary suture (as in the ddMgatoride and in Croc. 
Hastingsi@), but sometimes one or the other, or even both, canine 
notches are converted into complete pits, as in Alligators. It would 
not be surprising, then, to find the same peculiarity occasionally 
occurring in Croc. Hastingsi@, and still less is it so if we consider the 
nearer approximation to some AMgatoride exhibited by the dermal 
! See my paper on the Dermal Armour of recent Crocodélia cited above. 
