A TRIP TO TRINIDAD. 



359 



These habits, and the name of cocodrilo, which is 

 given in Cuba to the most dangerous of the carnivo- 

 rous saurians, seem to me to indicate a different spe- 

 cies from the great animals of the Orinoco and Mag- 

 dalena rivers, and St. Domingo. The colonists in all 

 other parts of Spanish America, deceived by the 

 exaggerated tales of the ferocity of the Egyptian cro- 

 codile, affirm that there are no true crocodiles except 

 in the Nile ; while zoologists have found in America 

 the cayman, with obtuse snout and no scales on his 

 legs, and the cocodrilo, with pointed snout and with 

 scales on his legs. At the same time we find on the 

 old continent, the common crocodile, and those of 

 the Ganges, with rounded snout. 



The crocodilus acutus of St. Domingo, which I can- 

 not now undertake to class specifically, and the coco- 

 drilo. of the great Orinoco and Magdalena rivers, 

 have, in the words of Cuvier, so admirable a resem- 

 blance to' the crocodile of the Nile, that it has been 

 necessary to examine minutely every part, in order 

 to show that the law of Buffon, relative to the distri- 

 bution of species in the tropical regions of the two 

 continents, was not defective. 



As on my second visit to Havana, in 1804, 1 could 

 not revisit the marshes of Batabano, I procured at 

 a great expense specimens of the two species, 

 which the inhabitants call cayman and coeodrilo. 



