402 
HAITI. 
ceptibility 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 its young — to the 
maternal solicitude of the female for its progeny 
when it hears that voice — and to the ravenous ap- 
petite 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 and violent, 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 he 
there matured by the sun, the female visits from 
time^ to time the place in which they are secreted, 
and, just as the period of hatching is completed, ex- 
hibits her eagerness for her offspring 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 dog, ex- 
cites the half-extricated young to struggle forth into 
life. When she has beheld, with this sort of joy, 
fear, and anxiety, the last of her offspring quit its 
broken casement, she leads them forth into the 
plashy pools, away from the river, and among the 
* Professor Buckland has discovered in the excrementitious fossils 
of the Plesiosaurus or Fish Lizard evidences of a similar rapacious 
appetite in those extinct animals. The bones of the young Plesio- 
saurus were found in the petrified dung of the older ones. 
