The herd, alarmed by the sudden commotion, yet scarcely knowing what has happened, scatter at first, then rush all together and stand still, gazing from a safe distance at the suddenly revealed monster. Then, lowering their heads and whisking their tails in the air, they dash in wild gallop from the scene of the catastrophe. The pig that has thus fallen a victim is most likely to have been the little South American peccary, for this habit of lying in wait upon the actual shore, and then striking suddenly with the tail, seems more developed in the American alligators than in the crocodiles of the Old World. The force of such a blow, when delivered by an alligator of any size, is tremendous, sufficient, says somebody, writing to one of the papers, to break the leg of an ox like a pipe-stem. According to this account, one of the fierce bulls, common in Florida, was attacked by an alligator, and his bellowings brought four other bulls to his assistance. Two, if I remember, had their fore or hind legs broken, but the other three succeeded, between them, in goring their enemy to death. It was an exciting story. I cut it out, and still keep it somewhere—I would quote from it if I knew where. As it is, it would take me a long time to find again, even if I knew in what paper to look for it, for though I think it was in the _Field_ I am not quite sure—it was several years ago. However, there was nothing in it which seemed to me at all impossible, or even unlikely. I am not quite sure, now, how the fight began. It would seem as if the bulls must have found the alligator some way from the water, or probably he would have succeeded in throwing himself into it. Perhaps the bulls attacked him first, or perhaps he served the first one in the same way that that other alligator did the pig.