640 



THE TROPICAL WDRLD. 



sometimes encountered wandering in search of water in the jungle ; but generally, 

 during the extreme drought, they bury themselves in the sand where they remain in a 

 state of torpor, till released by the recurrence of the rains. Sir Emerson Tennent, 

 whilst riding across the parched bed of a tank, was shown the recess, still bearing the 

 form and impress of the crocodile, out of which the animal had been seen to emerge 

 the day before. A story was also related to him of an officer who, having pitched his 

 tent in a similar position, had been disturbed during the night by feeling a movement 

 of the earth below his bed. from which, on the following day, a crocodile emerged, 

 making its appearance from beneath the matting. 



Like many other of the lower animals, the crocodile, when surprised, endeavors to 

 save itself by feigning death. Sir Emerson Tennent relates an amusing anecdote 

 of one that was found sleeping several hundred yards from the water. " The terror 

 of the poor wretch was extreme when he awoke and found himself discovered and 

 completely surrounded. He was a hideous creature, upwards of ten feet long, and 

 evidently of prodigious strength, had he been in a condition to exert it ; but consterna- 

 tion completely paralyzed him. He started to his feet, and turned round in a circle, 

 hissing and clacking his bony jaws, with his ugly green eye intently fixed upon us. 

 On being struck, he lay perfectly quiet and apparently dead. Presently he looked 

 round cunningly, and made a rush towards the water ; but on a second blow he lay 

 again motionless, and feigning death. We tried to rouse him, but without effect; 

 pulled his tail, slapped his back, struck his hard scales, and teased him in every way, 

 but all in vain. Nothing would induce him to move, till, accidentally, my son, a boy 

 of twelve years old, tickled him gently under the arm, and in an instant he drew it 

 close to his side, and turned to avoid a repetition of the experiment. Again he was 

 touched under the other arm, and the same emotion was exhibited, the great monster 

 twisting about like an infant to avoid being tickled." 



In the South Sea, exposed to the vertical beams of the equatorial sun, lies a large 

 group of uninhabited islands, on whose sterile shores you would look in vain for the 

 palms, bananas, or bread-fruit trees of more favored lands, as rain falls only upon 

 the bights, and never descends to call forth plenty on the arid coasts. And yet this 

 desolate group offers many points of interest to the naturalist, for the Galapagos or 

 Tortoise Islands represent, as it were, a little world in themselves, a peculiar creation 

 of animals and plants, reminding us, more strongly than the productions of any other 

 land, of an earlier epoch of planetary life. Here are no less than twenty-six diflferent 

 species of land-birds, which, "vith one single exception, are found nowhere else. 

 Their plumage is homely, like the flora of their native country; their tameness so 

 great that they may be killed with a stick. A sea-mew, likewise peculiar to this 

 group, mixes its shriek with the hoarse-resounding surge ; lizards, existing in no other 

 country, swarm about the shore ; and the gigantic land-tortoise ( Testudo indica^ 

 elephantind) , although now spread over many other countries, is supposed by Mr. 

 Darwin to have had its original seat in the Galapagos, where it was formerly found 

 in such vast numbers as to have given the group its Spanish name. If the seafarer 

 visits these treeless shores, which as yet produce nothing else worth gathering, it is 

 chiefly for the purpose of catching a few of these huge animals, which, in spite of 

 frequent persecutions, still amply reward a short sojourn with a rich supply of fresh 



