150 Reptiles, 



it down to the sand, prevented him from kicking up another dust. He was finally 

 conveyed to the canoe, and then to the place where we had suspended our hammocks. 

 There I cut his throat, and after breakfast was over, commenced the dissection." — 

 * Wanderings in South America^ ^c' by Charles Waterton, Esq. — p. 241, 2nd ed. 



Note on the Cayman. By Charles Waterton, Esq. 



My dear Sir, 



The accompanying paper on the cayman by Charles 

 Waterton, Esq., was sent me by that gentleman as one of several arti- 

 cles which I intend to appear in a second volume of *Waterton's 

 Essays on Natural History ; ' but as these will not be published for 

 some time, and as the facts relating to the cayman are of immediate 

 interest, I have Mr. Waterton's permission to send the article for pub- 

 lication in ' The Zoologist,' reserving of course the copyright, with a 

 view to a second volume of the Essays. 



I remain, My dear Sir, 



Yours, &c., 



J. C. Loudon. 

 To the Editor of * The Zoologist.' 



The Cayman. 



" The crocodile, in fact, is only dangerous when in the water. Upon land it is 

 a slow-paced and even timid animal; so that an active boy armed with a small hatchet 

 might easily dispatch one. There is no great prowess therefore required to ride on the 

 back of a poor cayman after it has been secured or perhaps wounded ; and a modem 

 writer might well have spared the recital of his feats in this way upon the cayman of 

 Guiana, had he not been influenced in this and numberless other instances, by the 

 greatest possible love of the marvellous, and a constant propensity to dress truth in the 

 garb of fiction." — Extract from ' Lardner^s Cabinet Cyclopedia. — Fishes.^ — ii. 111. 



SwAiNSON, — wholesale dealer in closet-zoology, was never in the 

 wilds of Guiana, where the book of ' Wanderings ' was written. Hence 

 any comment on the above extract were loss of labour and of time. 



His erroneous account of the cayman at once shows me that he ne- 

 ver saw this animal in its native haunts. 



I stop not here to tell the world how I came to incur the hostility 

 of this morbid and presumptuous man. Suffice it to say that former- 

 ly, in friendship (for I personally knew his worthy father), I used to 

 give him ornithological information. But his behaviour was such 

 that I found myself under the absolute necessity of discontinuing my 

 correspondence with him : and this laid the foundation of that animosity 

 which at last has induced him publicly to call in question my veracity. 



