[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, attachés aux colonnes de leurs maisons. Ils les vendent la chair comme on vendrait de la chair de porc, mais à bien meilleur marché."--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 his coolies disembowelled, the aperture in the stomach being left expanded by a stick placed across it. On returning in the afternoon with a view to secure the head, they found that the creature had crawled for some distance, and made its escape into the water.]