288 



REPTILES. 



[Chap. IX. 



residence, a hook having been laid the night before, 

 baited with the entrails of a goat ; and made fast, in the 

 native fashion, by a bunch of fine cords, which the 

 creature cannot gnaw asunder as it would a solid rope, 

 since they sink into the spaces between its teeth. The 

 one taken was small, being only about ten or eleven 

 feet in length, whereas they are frequently killed from 

 fifteen to nineteen feet long. As long as it was in the 

 water, it made strong resistance to being hauled on 

 shore, carrying the canoe out into the deep channel, 

 and occasionally raising its head above the surface, and 

 clashing its jaws together menacingly. This action has 

 a horrid sound, as the crocodile has no fleshy lips, and 

 it brings its teeth and the bones of the mouth together 

 with a loud crash, like the clank of two pieces of hard 

 wood. After playing it a little, the boatmen drew it to 

 land, and when once fairly on the shore all courage and 

 energy seemed utterly to desert it. It tried once or 

 twice to regain the water, but at last lay motionless and 

 perfectly helpless on the sand. It was no easy matter 

 to kill it ; a rifle ball sent diagonally through its breast 

 had little or no effect, and even when the shot had been 

 repeated more than once, it was as full of life as ever. 1 It 



1 A remarkable instance of the ganga, a stream which flows through 



vitality of the common crocodile, the Pasdun Corle, to join the Ben- 



C. biporcatus, was related to me tolle river. A man was fishing 



by a gentleman at Galle : he had seated on the branch of a tree that 



caught on a baited hook an nn- overhung the water ; and to shelter 



usually large one, which his coolies himself from the drizzling rain, he 



disembowelled, the aperture in the covered his head and shoulders 



stomach being left expanded by a with a bag folded into a shape 



stick placed across it. On return- common with the natives. While 



ing in the afternoon with a view to in this attitude, a leopard sprung 



secure the head, they found that upon him from the jungle, but, 



the creature had crawled for some missing its aim, seized the bag and 



distance, and made its escape into not the man, and fell with it into 



the water. the river. Here a crocodile, which 



" A curious incident occurred had been eyeing the angler in 



some years ago on the Maguru- despair, seized the leopard as it 



