Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/182

154 was spent in dissecting it, and I found it fully as tenacious of life as the land tortoise itself.

The mouth of the cayman is furnished with a most formidable row of teeth in each jaw, but they are peculiarly shaped for snatch and swallow. He has no grinders; hence no laceration of the food can take place in the mouth. But a contest will often ensue amongst the congregated reptiles, when the morsel is too large for deglutition; and then each individual snatches at what it can get, and pulls away the piece.

The nose of the cayman forms a pretty rotund figure. This, together with the rough protuberance which guards the eye from above, may be modelled by my new process, and rendered as elevated as it appeared during the life of the animal.

When Swainson tells us that the snout of crocodiles and caymans is unusually depressed, I know immediately that he has been at his wonted employment of examining a dried skin.

In dissecting a cayman for preservation, you may separate the tail at every other joint. This division renders the process extremely easy. The head also may be divided from the body, and replaced afterwards with great success.

After the whole of the dissection is finished, you steep the skin for about a quarter of an hour in the solution of corrosive sublimate, and then by means of sand you proceed to restore the form and feature which the animal possessed in life.

An adept in this new mode of preparing zoological specimens for Museums (see the Essays) would be enabled to bring home an alligator very superior indeed to those hung up in apothecaries' shops, during the life of Shakespeare.—"An alligator stuffed."

My cayman is now in as good condition as it was on the day in which I dissected it; and it will set decay at defiance for centuries to come, provided no accident befal it.

I have mentioned briefly in the Wanderings, an account which the governor of Angustura gave me of the boldness and ferocity of the cayman. I may here repeat the story somewhat more at length.

In the year 1808, I carried Lord Collingwood's despatches up the Oronoque to the city of Angustura, where the Spanish governor, Don Felipe de Ynciarté resided. I corresponded with him for some time afterwards. He was a soldier, of vast information in the Natural History of the country; and had been a great explorer in his day. He showed me a large map of Spanish Guiana, having made it from his own personal survey of those regions in early life. On the breaking