w his bed, from which on the following day a crocodile emerged,
making its appearance from beneath the matting.[5]

[Footnote 1: Crocodilus biporcatus. _Cuvier._]

[Footnote 2: Crocodilus palustris, _Less_.]

[Footnote 3: In Siam the flesh of the crocodile is sold for food in the
markets and bazaars. "Un jour je vis plus de cinquante crocodiles,
petits et grands, attaches aux colonnes de leurs maisons. Ils les
vendent la chair comme on vendrait de la chair de porc, mais a bien
meilleur marche."--PALLEGOIX, _Siam_, vol. i. p. 174.]

[Footnote 4: HERODOTUS records the observations of the Egyptians that
the crocodile of the Nile abstains from food during the four winter
months.--_Euterpe_, lviii.]

[Footnote 5: HUMBOLDT relates a similar story as occurring at Calabazo,
in Venezuela.--_Personal Narrative_, c. xvi.]

The species which inhabits the fresh water is essentially cowardly in
its instincts, and hastens to conceal itself on the appearance of man. A
gentleman (who told me the circumstance), when riding in the jungle,
overtook a crocodile, evidently roaming in search of water. It fled to a
shallow pool almost dried by the sun, and, thrusting its head into the
mud till it covered up its eyes, it remained unmoved in profound
confidence of perfect concealment. In 1833, during the progress of the
Pearl Fishery, Sir Robert Wilmot Horton employed men to drag for
crocodiles in a pond which was infested with them in the immediate
vicinity of Aripo. The pool was about fifty yards in length, by ten or
twelve wide, shallowing gradually to the edge, and not exceeding four or
five feet in the deepest part. As the party approached the bund, from
twenty to thirty reptiles, which had been basking in the sun, rose and
fled to the water. A net, specially weighted so as to sink its lower
edge to the bottom, was then stretched from bank to bank and swept to
the further end of the pond, followed by a line of men with poles to
drive the crocodiles forward: so complete was the arrangement, that no
individual could evade the net, yet, to the astonishment of the
Governor's party, not one was to be found when it was drawn on shore,
and no means of escape was apparent or possible except descending into
the mud at the bottom of the pond.[1]

[Footnote 1: A remarkable instance of the vitality of the common
crocodile, _C. biporcatus_, was related to me by a gentleman at Galle:
he had caught on a baited hook an unusually large one, which h