499 



fishes that inhabit its native element, but many a bright-plumed, 

 water-fowl and unsuspecting quadruped falls a prey to its rapacity. 



seized in the huge reptile's powerful jaws, dragged under water, 

 drowned and devoured. The crocodile evinces a decided prefer- 

 ence for tainted meat, and after capturing large prey it is often 

 kept uneaten in the water until in a state of partial decomposition. 

 The males are very pugnacious and often fight desperately for 



rigr.2ii. 



possession of the females. Sometimes an individual is captured 



leg is wholly or partly wanting. Last winter we killed an alli- 

 gator whose upper jaw was broken off squarely half way up to the 

 eyes by some long previous accident. 



The female crocodile lays from twenty to thirty eggs at a time. 

 With her feet and nose she scoops a hole in the mud or sand on 

 the shore, taking care to select a slightly elevated situation, and in 

 this deposits her eggs in several layers, one upon another, placing 

 a coat of earth, reeds and grass over each layer. The heat gener- 

 ated by the fermentation of this mass is sufficient to hatch the 

 eggs in about thirty days. 



While the crocodiles are distributed throughout all the southern 

 hemisphere, in fact in all tropical regions, their cousins, the alli- 

 gators, are confined to America ; one species, the A. Mississip- 

 perms "Gray, being especially abundant in the southern United 

 States. It was formerly thought that the crocodile did not inhabit 

 Australia, but it is now known to be there in respectable numbers, 

 some specimens of great size having been captured. No one spe- 

 cies of the Crocodilidce is universally distributed, but the genus 

 Crocodilus is widely known and has a greater range than any of its 



