SIR HANS SLOANE. 
37 
'* There was an alligator that used to do abun- 
dance of mischief to the people’s cattle in the 
neighbourhood, having his regular course to look 
for prey. One of the inhabitants there, as I was 
told, tied a long cord to his bedstead, and to the 
other end of the cord fastened a piece of wood 
and a dog, so that the alligator, swallowing the 
dog and piece of wood, the latter came cross his 
throat as it was designed, and after pulling his 
bedstead to the window, and awakening the person 
in bed, he was caught. Alligators love dogs 
extremely, but prey also on cattle. This alligator 
was nineteen feet long.” 
“ I once went to visit Mr Rowe, a sick person, 
at St Jago de la Vega, in Jamaica, in a morning, 
and found him more than ordinarily discomposed ; 
for that the ants, by eating in the night some of 
the joints of his bedstead, his bed of a sudden 
had fallen to the ground.” 
Mr Knapp, in his elegant and highly interesting 
“ Journal of a Naturalist,”* has remarked how 
slowly the potato was received into England as 
an article of food, and that it was entirely con- 
fined to the use of the lower classes for many 
years, f An observation of Sloane’s (writing so 
* Page 33. 
t From an anecdote in the Retrospective Review, vol. 
*'• P- 331, it appears that about seventy years ago, they 
were beginning to be appreciated as a delicacy in the 
neighbourhood of London. A lady then living, (1825,) 
