In an early Bestiary it states that “if a crocodile comes across a man it kills him, but it remains inconsolable the rest of its life;” but why it suffers this life-long remorse we are not told. This old writer also tells us of the hydra, “a very wise animal who understands well how to injure the crocodile.” The _modus operandi_ is very simple, and the injury inflicted seems beyond question:—“When the hydra sees the crocodile go to sleep it covers itself over with slimy mud, and wriggles itself into the crocodile’s mouth, penetrates into its stomach, and then tears it assunder.” The dolphin appears to be another foe to be by no means despised. Pliny tells us that when these desire to pass up the Nile the crocodiles, who regard the river as their peculiar preserve, greatly resent their presence, and endeavour to drive them back. As the dolphins fully realize that they are no match for their foes in fair fight, they take refuge in their superior activity and craft, and having a dorsal fin as sharp edged as a knife, they swim swiftly beneath the crocodiles, and as the under portion of these creatures is unprotected by the armour that is so conspicuous on the upper parts of their bodies, with one sharp gash they rip the crocodile completely open. It was a Greek superstition that beneath the visible exterior of the seal was concealed a woman, and that when a swimmer ventured too far he ran great risk of being seized by a seal and strangled. The creature then carried the lifeless body to some desert shore and wept over it, from which arose the popular saying that when a woman shed false tears she cried like a seal. As the desert shore implies absence of spectators, it seems difficult to tell what authority there is for the statement as to what went on there, and even when this initial difficulty is overcome it seems equally impossible to suggest any satisfactory reason for the gruesome proceedings of this weird woman-seal or seal-woman, either in the preliminary murderous attack or the subsequent lamentation. Whatever strange idea may have originally started the story, it is a curious parallel to that of the weeping crocodile.