Callous to every other generous sentiment, the female Cayman continues for some time after their birth to watch over her young with great care. One day, as Richard Schomburgk, accompanied by an Indian, was busy fishing on the banks of the Essequibo, he suddenly heard in the water a strange noise, resembling the mewing of young cats. With eager curiosity he climbed along the trunk of a tree overhanging the river, about three feet above the water, and saw beneath him a brood of young alligators, about a foot and a half long. On his seizing and lifting one of them out of the water, the mother, a creature of prodigious size, suddenly emerged with an appalling roar, making desperate efforts to reach her wriggling and screeching offspring, and increasing in rage every time Schomburgk tantalised her by holding it out to her. Having been wounded with an arrow, she retired for a few moments, and then again returned with redoubled fury, lashing the waters into foam by the repeated strokes of her tail. Schomburgk now cautiously retreated, as in case of a fall into the water below, he would have had but little reason to expect a friendly reception, the monster pertinaciously following him to the bank, but not deeming it advisable to land, as here it seemed to feel its helplessness. The scales of the captured young one were quite soft and pliable, as it was only a few days old, but it already had the peculiar musk-like smell which characterises the full-grown reptile. The sight of the first crocodile he meets with, lying on a flat sand-bank of the Nile, is a great event in the traveller’s life in Egypt. With all the eagerness of curiosity he first seizes his telescope to have a look at the monster, and then his gun, to drive, if possible, a bullet through its harnessed skin. But long before the enemy approaches, the wary reptile creeps slowly into the river, and plunging into the water, mocks all further pursuit. If the sportsman wishes to become better acquainted with the leviathan, he must wander farther to the South. The thousands of crocodile mummies piled up in the pits of Monfaloot, prove that in ancient times the dreaded reptile must have been common in the land of the Pharaohs; at present this can only be affirmed of the Sudan, where one may reckon with certainty upon finding a crocodile upon every sand-bank of the two Niles. The favourite resorts of the crocodile are quiet places in the rivers, where it can bask undisturbed in the sun; the cataracts it seems are not to its taste. It is no lover of change, for old men affirm that since their childhood they have seen the same crocodile invariably make its appearance upon the same island, nor is there reason to doubt their word, as the reptile attains an extreme old age. A life of a hundred years is exceptional with man, with the crocodile it is probably but a part of its existence. At its birth the animal issues from an egg not bigger than that of a goose; it grows very slowly like all amphibia,