The general colour of the Crocodile is a dullish brown, with sometimes a shade of green along the back; the head and the sides are marked with green, or at least they have a greenish tint, with blackish spots; the under part of the legs and belly are of a yellowish grey. All these shades, however, vary with age and sex, and the nature of the water in which the animals live. Crocodiles are oviparous, and their eggs are provided with resistant shells. These eggs are deposited by the female in some secluded place in the sand on the banks of the river, and are hatched simply by the ambient heat, without any assistance from the mother. The female Crocodiles of the Nile deposit their eggs where the solar heat soon brings them to maturity. In certain countries, such as the neighbourhood of Cayenne and Surinam, the eggs are buried under a kind of mound which the Alligators raise in damp places by gathering together leaves and herbaceous stems. This vegetable debris undergoes a kind of fermentation, the result of which is an increase of temperature, which, joined to that of the atmosphere, produces the desired result. Lacépède describes an egg in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, which was laid by a Crocodile fourteen feet in length, which was killed in Upper Egypt. This egg is only two inches and five lines in its greatest diameter; in its least diameter it is one inch and eleven lines. It is oval and whitish. Its shell is cretaceous in substance, like the eggs of birds, but not so hard. At the time of their birth the little Crocodiles are only about six inches in length, but their growth is very rapid. They abound in large rivers in the tropics, and in marshy places near their banks. They often come on shore, for they are amphibious. In the night they watch for their prey. They feed exclusively on flesh--that is to say on fish, small Mammalians, aquatic birds, and reptiles. When they have seized a large object they drag it under the water, where it soon dies by asphyxia; there they leave it to macerate, when they eat it by instalments. In this manner men are sometimes carried away by Crocodiles, but it is contrary to the habits of the animal to suppose that they are devoured immediately. When a Crocodile has succeeded in seizing a negro, it does not devour him till the body becomes decomposed, when it can tear it to pieces with greater facility.