Hundreds or even thousands of flamingoes may congregate in these breeding-colonies; and there are few more beautiful sights in nature than to see a flock of these splendid birds, especially the scarlet American species, rise on the wing and display their full colouring and plumage in the sunlight. THE NILE CROCODILE (_Crocodilus niloticus_) To the ancient Egyptians the timsa, or Nile crocodile, the champsa of Herodotus, was a familiar reptile; but from the lower and middle portion of the Nile, as far up as Thebes, the species has long since been exterminated, although it is still abundant in East and South Africa. Elsewhere it occurs in Madagascar, and still survives, although sparingly, in Syria, more especially in the Zerka (= Crocodile) River near Cæsarea. In Biblical times crocodiles were, however, abundant in the Holy Land; and there is little doubt that the “leviathan” of the Book of Job refers to these noisome reptiles. Till nearly the fifteenth century it also seems that crocodiles lived in Greece and the Isles of the Grecian Archipelago; and at that date a huge crocodile’s skull was jealously preserved and exhibited at Rhodes. It is these ancient south European crocodiles which probably gave rise to the legend of St. George and the Dragon and other myths of a kindred nature. In popular estimation there is much confusion between crocodiles and alligators; and in India the former are almost invariably called alligators, although there is not a single representative of that group in the whole country. Indeed, alligators are confined to China and America; those of South America, properly known as caimans, differing from the typical Mississippi species by having a bony armour on the under as well as on the upper surface. There are many characters distinguishing crocodiles from alligators; one of the most easily recognised being that the fourth lower tooth of a crocodile bites into a notch on the outer side of the upper jaw, so that its summit is visible when the mouth is closed, whereas in an alligator the corresponding tooth is received into a pit, so that the tip is completely concealed when the reptile shuts its enormous mouth. True crocodiles, which, with alligators, caimans, and gavials, are the largest of living reptiles, are now represented by about eleven species, whose combined range includes Africa, southern Asia, northern Australia, and tropical America. India possesses two species, the broad-nosed muggar (_Crocodilus palustris_), and the narrow-nosed estuarine crocodile (_C. porosus_); the former of which ranges to Ceylon, Burma, and the Malay Peninsula and Islands, while the latter, which enters salt-water freely, and is sometimes found far out to sea, extends from India, Ceylon, and the south of China to northern Australia and the Solomon and Fiji Islands. [Illustration]