SIR HANS SLOANE. 
41 
which are the most pleasing food for these sort of 
serpents. It is upon this account that the Euro- 
pean nations inhabiting the countries producing 
sugar, do not molest these creatures, because they 
destroy the rats, (which came originally from 
ships cast away on the coast, &c.) which multiply 
strangely there, and do infinite mischief to the 
sugar canes, not only by eating them, but spoiling 
the juice of those they gnaw. 
“ The guana used to feed on calabash pulp, and 
lived very well on board of the yacht, till one day, 
when it was running along the gunnel of the 
vessel, a seaman frighted it, and it leaped over- 
board and was drowned. 
“ The Crocodile, or Alligator, I kept in a tub of 
salt water towards the forecastle, and fed it with 
the same sort of food as the snake, but it died on 
the 15th of May. Thus I lost, by this time of 
the voyage, all my live creatures ; and so it 
happens to most people, who lose their strange 
live animals for want of proper air, food, or 
shelter.” 
Immediately on his arrival, he settled as a 
physician. The collections he had brought home 
with him excited the curiosity and admiration of 
the learned, and contributed to his public fame. 
“ Several circumstances,” says Dr Pulteney,* 
“ concurred respecting the voyage of Dr Sloane 
* History of the Progress of Botany in England, 
vol. ii. p. 69 . 
