The Crocodile . 
303 
“ Lepidus. What manner o’ thing is your Crocodile ? crocodile 
Antony. It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as 
broad as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with its 
own organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements 
once out of it, it transmigrates. 
Lep. What colour is it of? 
Ant. Of its own colour too. 
Lep. ’Tis a strange serpent. 
Ant . ’Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.” 
{Antony and Cleopatra , ii. 7, 46.) 
Little more explicit are some of the descriptions of the 
crocodile by early writers. As a rule no distinction seems 
to have been made between the crocodile and the alligator, 
but Borneo's mention of— 
“ An alligator stuff’d, and other skins 
Of ill-shaped fishes 
{Borneo and Juliet , v. 1, 42), 
shows that the name alligator was in use at least, though 
the word crocodile would here probably be more correct. 
The amphibious habits of these animals seem to have 
puzzled our ancestors how to classify them; sometimes, 
as by Lejoidus, it is called a serpent. Chester whites:— 
“ The crocadile a saffron coloured snake, 
Sometimes upon the earth is conversant, 
And other times lives in a filthy lake, 
Being oppressed with foule needy want: 
The skinn upon his backe as hard as stone, 
Besisteth violent strokes of steele or iron.” 
{Love's Martyr , p. 116.) 
Marlowe had a somewhat exaggerated idea of its power of 
resistance to attacks from without:— 
“ Lie slumbering on the flowery banks of Nile, 
As crocodiles that unaffrighted rest, 
While thundering cannons rattle on their skins.” 
(1 Tamburlaine, iv. 1.) 
The crocodile, “ Nile’s fell rover,” is sometimes ranked as 
