According to the natives, the hideous reptile possesses a true friend in a small bird (_Hyas Ægyptiacus_), called by the Arabs Rhafihr-el-Timsach, or the ‘crocodile’s guardian’--a not inappropriate name, though the bird performs the part of a guardian not from any friendly feeling but accidentally. It lives on the islands and flat banks of the Nile and its tributaries, and being extremely swift has no reason to fear the crocodile. It runs without the least hesitation over the back of the sleeping monster, feeds on the leeches and water-insects that may have settled there, and seems to consider it as harmless as a log of wood. Its habit of uttering a piercing cry at the sight of man betrays his approach to the crocodile, who generally awakes and creeps into the water. The young of the crocodiles have no less numerous enemies than those of the snakes. Many an egg is destroyed in the hot sand by small carnivora, or birds, before it can be hatched; and as soon as the young creep out of the broken shell, and instinctively move to the waters, the herons, cranes and other long-legged wading birds gobble up many of them, so that their span of life is short indeed. In the water they are not only the prey of various sharp-toothed fishes, but even of the males of their own species, while the females do all they can to protect them. Even man not only kills the crocodile in self-defence, or for the sake of sport, but for the purpose of regaling upon its flesh. In the Siamese markets, crocodiles, large and small, may be seen hanging in the butchers’ stalls; and Captain Stokes,[30] who more than once supped off alligators’ steaks, informs us that the meat is by no means bad. According to one of those zoological fables which by frequent repetition usurp the authority of facts, the Ichneumon or Pharaoh’s Rat, a small animal closely resembling the weasel tribe, is supposed to be the most dangerous enemy of the full grown crocodile. It is said to creep into the maw of the unwieldy reptile when asleep, to penetrate into its stomach, to tear its heart, and then with its sharp teeth to cut its way out of the dead Leviathan’s body. In plain truth the Ichneumon is a far more dangerous enemy to rats, mice, lizards, snakes and little birds, than to the huge crocodile, and instead of being esteemed for his imaginary service as he is supposed to have been by the ancient Egyptians, is detested by the fellah as the active plunderer of his pigeon cots and hen roosts. A similar fable relates that in the rivers of America, a tortoise of the genus Cinyxis, after having been swallowed by the alligator, and thanks to its shelly case arriving unharmed in its stomach, eats its way out again with its sharp beak, thus putting the monster to an excruciating death.