Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/180

152 codile. Their shedding tears, and their devouring the young ones as soon as hatched, are inventions only for the nursery fire-side.

Master Swainson's assertion that the crocodile "conveys its food to some hole at the edge of the water, where it is suffered to putrify before it is devoured," may suit an infant school, but it will be rejected with a smile of contempt by any one who has paid the least attention to the anatomy of the crocodile's head. The dissector would see that the mouth of this reptile is completely formed for snatch and swallow. Now any common observer of the habits of animals with a mouth so formed, must know at first sight, that these animals never eject food which has once entered the mouth. Down the throat it goes immediately, unless there be some impediment, as in the case of a stag's horns. Supposing for an instant (but no one except a second Master Swainson could suppose such a manifest absurdity) that the crocodile does really place its food in a hole until putridity commences; pray how is the animal to secure it from his ravenous fellow-crocodiles?—or by what process is he to curb his own hunger until the lardered morsel be ready for deglutition?

The old and hackneyed account of crocodiles devouring their own young when newly hatched, is really unworthy of refutation. Depend upon it, no such unnatural banquet takes place; for the crocodiles are never reduced to so abhorrent a necessity. The rivers which they inhabit abound with fish, both large and small; and on these the crocodiles feed, as well as on fresh-water turtle.

And as to the vultures watching individuals of the family of crocodile until they have laid their eggs, and then devouring them, it is an ancient fable, which, like Don Quixote's library of romances, ought to be thrown to the fire in the court-yard, and there burnt with the rest of the trash.

I can positively affirm that neither in the Essequibo nor in the Oronoque did I see one single solitary attempt of a vulture to invade the spot where a cayman had deposited her eggs. The cayman, in fact, may perform her task with impunity, whilst hundreds of vultures are standing motionless on the branches of a tree hard by, where they remain till hunger bids them be stirring, and then they all take wing and fly away in quest of carrion.

Had they been watching the cayman's treasures, they would have descended from the tree, and not have ascended in aërial flight.

The cayman not unfrequently lays its eggs in a heap of dry leaves. The eggs afford good nourishment to man. They are about the size of those of a turkey, perhaps somewhat larger. The outside of the