478 



The alligator of the Antilles. 



probably devours immediately after catching them, but all other things 

 else, as soon as they are slain, are torn, and mangled limb by limb, and 

 left to putrify in the mud of the river or the sedge about its lurking 

 place. It can have no particular preference, therefore, for the dog as 

 food. I am disposed to ascribe this susceptibility to be roused at the 

 canine yelp to the similarity of that sound to its own peculiar cry 

 under any species of excitement ; to the fact that it is the impassioned 

 voice of their young ; to maternal solicitude of the female for its 

 progeny, when it hears that voice ; and to the ravenous appetite of the 

 male on the same occasion ; for, like many of the rapacious animals, 

 the male of this tribe preys upon its own offspring. 



It is not very clear whether the male parent, after it has sought the 

 attachment of the female, in which its passion is fierce, violent, and 

 jealous, assists her in the office of disposing the eggs in the earth. It 

 is much more likely, from the necessity of her after watchfulness to 

 guard against his reprisals, that he does not. After burying the eggs 

 in the soil to be there matured, the female visits from time to time the 

 place in which they are secreted, and just as the period of hatching is 

 completed, her eagerness is exhibited in the anxiety with which she 

 comes and goes, walks around the nest of her hopes, scratches the 

 fractured shell, and by sounds which resemble the hark of a young dog, 

 excites the half extricated young, in their broken covering, to struggle 

 forth into life. When she has beheld, with this sort of joy, fear, and 

 anxiety, the last of her offspring quit its casement, she leads them forth 

 into the plashy pools, away from the river, and among the thick under- 

 wood, to avoid the predatory visits of the father. In this care and 

 watchfulness over them, she is ferocious, daring, and morose, guarding 

 with the inquietude of the hen her brood wherever they wander ; 

 turning when they turn, and by whining and grunting showing a 

 particular solicitude to keep them in such pools only as are much too 

 shallow for the resort of the full-grown reptile. When I was in 

 Yasica, a river district of that name, as many as forty had been 

 discovered in one of these secret resorts ; but in half an hour, when the 

 boys who had found them out returned to visit their hiding-place, they 

 saw the traces of the coming and going of the watchful parent, who 

 had led them away to some further and safe retreat. In this period 

 of infantile helplessness, the mother feeds them with her masticated 

 food, disgorging it out to them as the dog does to its pups. It is not 

 frequently it is seen otherwise than crouching with its belly to the 

 earth, and crawling with a curvilinear motion, as the eft, or water- 



