THE LIVING WORLD. 
167 
remains during dry seasons and until rains come to soften its bed and 
give a covering of water. The adult animal is shy, and seldom commits any 
ravages, but its young are particularly ferocious, apparently being unconscious of 
fear. Those not exceeding ten inches in length will seize and hold fast on to 
a stick thrust at them, and a finger would invite an attack no less readily. 
The Gavial is the best known, because most ferocious and voracious of the 
several crocodile species in India. It retains a remarkable resemblance to the 
ancient teleosaurus, of which creature it is certainly a direct descendant. The 
Ganges river fairly swarms with these monster saurians, and to their great 
number and the depredations they commit is added a superstitious reverence 
for the animal. The practice of sacrificing infants to this monster is now 
uncommon, on account of British influence dominating in the native customs, 
but in former years the sight was frequent about Benares of a mother carrying 
her child towards the Ganges to offer it as a sacrifice to the gavial god; the 
fond mother, believing she was preparing a flowery way to heaven for her child, 
would pause upon the river’s 
bank and cover it with pas¬ 
sionate kisses, fondle it in a 
thousand ways, as if deferring 
the dread act about to be com¬ 
mitted, until a fairly bursting 
heart was overcome by religious 
devotion, when she would toss 
the innocent offspring to the 
cruel monsters that were wait¬ 
ing for the sacrificial feast. 
Never more than a single cry 
would fall upon her ears, for 
in an instant the little innocent 
would be torn into a hundred 
pieces, and only a bloody dye 
on the surface remain to show, 
for a few moments, where the 
tragedy occurred. 
The gavial differs in appear¬ 
ance from others of the croco¬ 
dilian family by having a much 
greater prolongation of nose, upon the end of which is a prominent, wart-like 
nodule, which it uses to root in the mud, like a hog. 
The Margined Crocodile is found principally in South Africa, its distin¬ 
guishing feature being a compression, amounting to an indentation of the fore¬ 
head, while the nozzle is somewhat shorter. But in other respects it is identi¬ 
cal with the Nile species. TT , , 
The Alligator proper is found only in waters of the Western Hemisphere, 
where there are several species called indiscriminately alligator , cayman , croco¬ 
dile and jacara. The difference between these, if real difference does exist, is 
so slight that no naturalist has as yet attempted to show wherein it lies. In 
fact aside from very small differences in appearance, and the disparity m size, 
alligators and crocodiles are practically the same animal, the larger being more 
ALLIGATORS OF AMERICA. 
