46 



THE CAYMAN. 



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 modern 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, vol. ii. p. 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 never 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 pre- 

 sumptuous man. Suffice it to say, that for- 

 merly, in friendship (for I personally knew his 

 worthy father), I used to give him ornitholo- 



