carcass in the sun, his enemy often encounters him; on the contrary, if the tiger is seen swimming, the cayman plunges in after him, and pulls him under the water. The caymans, however, usually watch their prey in the water, submersing the whole body except the snout and eyes, which are prominent.

A terrible encounter ensues when the cayman and camaiduor, or great water serpent, meet. Their tumbling and splashing may be heard at a great distance. The serpent, when they meet on the brink of the water, avoiding the enormous jaws of the cayman, rapidly throws itself about his body, is often untwisted in the struggle, lashing the water with tremendous violence, and returns like lightning to the gripe, till he completely squeezes his antagonist to death, unless the cayman succeeds in getting his jaws to bear upon him, in which case the battle is quickly decided. Mr James Fraser, being in the river Waieny, on a tour to the Orinooko, in 1826, heard some loud noises, seemingly like the discharge of great guns at a distance; and all his Indian attendants said it was caused by the tail of a camudi thrashing the water in a battle with the cayman.

The porpess is the natural enemy and entire master of the cayman, so much so, indeed, that the natives enter the water without fear when the tonina (porpess) is in sight. It attacks the cayman wherever they meet. The cayman is driven into the water by other enemies, as the tiger; but it is made to scamper ashore by the porpess. The ideas of the ancients respecting the dolphin's attachment to man, seem to be in some measure realized in this species of delphinus. It is well known that they accompany ships to considerable distances, as does the shark, but with different motives. This is doubtless a distinct species from the common porpess or the D. Phocæna of naturalists, Phokaina of Aristotle. We even saw them in the Rio Maou and the Parima, whence they must make a journey of hundred miles to reach the ocean. many

Two caymans in combat make a dreadful noise, standing up chopping together their jaws, tumbling down, and thrashing the water with great violence.

An instance is related of an Indian caught by a cayman at the Lake of Marawareta, procuring his release by having the

presence of mind to stab the cayman in the eyes with a knife, the water being shoal. This manœuvre is inculcated from their infancy. This, or a similar occurrence, is related by Humboldt while at Angostura.

At Metanza, the caymans are more shy than those of the Essequibo, and take to the water before one can approach them. These animals have become incomparably more bold and ravenous than formerly in the Orinooko, since the feasting they have had on human flesh during the carnage of the late war. Before that time, they were scarcely dreaded, and up the Essequibo they would rarely attack a man, or endeavour to shun him, being, in those solitary retreats, quite unmolested. They were so numerous, that my travelling companion, Mr Sertema, at the same time, and without changing place, stood and counted thirty caymans at a stagnant pool or lagune on the Repoononie, the animals lying just below the water, and their snouts projecting above it. Travelling, in 1811, in the vicinity of the Takotu with some Portuguese, we had several times occasion to swim across the smaller rivers and pools. To frighten away the caymans, we had only to throw ourselves into the water with violence, beat and cause a great splashing. Such experiment in the Oronooko would now be a very dangerous one, as they overthrow small corials, and instantly seize any person in the water.

The cayman, it is said, does not strike, as generally supposed, with its tail, but with its head, and that suddenly and with tremendous force. The alligators do the same.

The cayman of Orinooko takes its prey both on land and in the water indifferently; but it can devour it only on land, as it cannot swallow under water without letting it in, such is the formation of the glottis. The larynx is provided with a valve which excludes the water by shutting over the orifices both of the œsophagus and trachea. It cannot, however, bear long exposure to the sun.

The cayman swallows stones in considerable quantities. Some think this is to satisfy hunger; others, to assist digestion ; while others believe it arises from an instinctive faculty to render the body specifically heavier, and to enable the animal to sink in the water. I found, in a young cayman, two pieces of lead as well

as stones. The harder pebble stones, of the agate and crystal kinds, are frequently found in the stomach.

In opening one to determine this fact, I found the stomach and intestines membranous; the former consisting of an extended canal, very thick in its coats and narrow, and having a small quantity of half digested animal and vegetable substances within it. Below this, in a large paunch or perhaps second stomach, were found 4lb. or 5 lb. of pebble stones of various sizes, from that of a pea to that of a walnut. Nothing else was found within it except a bit of indigested skin of some animal.

As to the incubation of the cayman, if any one stoops over the nest, places his ear close, and strikes over it,-if ready to come out, the young fry will be heard croaking. It is said the cayman takes this method of trial. The cayman waits about its eggs laid in the sand, places itself to the landward, and when the little ones are rising from the ground, it devours all that run that way: the others go clear and find their way to the

water.

The cayman is not known above the falls in the Rio Caroni, as the people there think from inability to ascend the falls; but this is a great misconception. This river, above the falls, is quite unfit for its abode, being shallow, rapid, and full of rocks. It seems rather strange, however, that they are not found in the River Pomeroon, which is very deep, still, and dark-colour ed; but some of the natives have a fancy that they are deterred by the camuduors, the great water serpents, which inhabit this river, for these are inveterate enemies, and the deep black water of this river must give a decided advantage to the water serpent.

It is asserted that the animal buries itself in the mud, to pass the summer or dry weather, when the water of the lakes is drying up. Jose Yustre, however, says that the cayman and great serpents do not inter themselves in the ground, as represented by Humboldt; that they do not roar; and that the tiger always kills the cayman in combat, the latter being so inflexible that he cannot get a grasp of the tiger, who springs upon his back and gores the neck. He confirms the story that the cayman ever avoids the porpess.

A cayman was killed, in 1815, before the house of Mr Loranda at Angostura: I examined and found it measured eleven feet. It had a series of thin cartilaginous appendages on both sides of the back, extending to within 18 inches of the extremity of the tail. The head was long and narrow. It had soft crescent

shaped nostrils near the end of the snout. There were 19 teeth on one side of the upper jaw, 20 on the other, and 15 on each side the lower jaw. The two fore-teeth in the lower jaw projected through the upper. There were 5 toes on the fore feet; and 4 on the hind ones. Its colour was black, except the belly. Internally, there was a folding membrane, valve-like, before the gullet, but no tongue. This was a young female, and had small eggs the size of pistol bullets.

A Carib called it Acàrou, or Acaàru, in his language.

There is a large species of crocodile inhabiting the interior rivers, which is quite unknown to naturalists, and even to the littoral tribes of Indians; but all the inland tribes recognise it by a distinct name. The Macosi Indians call it Teri-teri-ou. They described it as having an appendage or extension of the skin along each side of the belly, and a forked or divided tail. It is said to grow near the size of the cayman of Orinooko; but to be less dangerous than it. Some Arowaks say the Teri-teri-ou is second in size, and inhabits deep waters. I should doubt the existence of this last, were it not that all the inland nations have a name for it distinct from that of the cayman and alligator. The united testimony of so many tribes renders it certain that such an animal does exist.

Don Francisco Yustre, an intelligent Savanero, says there is another smaller species of baba, yellow, with short head, and nose turned up.

William and Johnson, two Arowak Indians, say there is a white kykoty; and both agree in representing it as about 18 inches long.

Researches in regard to the Ancient History of our Domestic Animals, and our Common Plants. By M. DUREAU de la Mallu.

I. The Cat. Felis.

THERE is much obscurity respecting the native country of the cat, and the period at which it was first domesticated.

Baron Cuvier, in the last edition of his Regne Animal*, and Frederick Cuvier, under the word Chat†, in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles, affirm, the former, that the cat (which it is true sometimes occurs wild in France) is a native of our forests; the latter, that the period at which the cat was domesticated, does not seem to be very remote, and that the Greeks were little acquainted with it, &c. +

These assertions of two very able zoologists have seemed to me to require examination, not being confirmed by positive testimony.

It is evident, in the first place, that the Greeks were acquainted with the cat from the most remote antiquity. The mummies of that animal found in the sepulchres of Thebes, and the figures sculptured on monuments on which we read the names of the Pharaohs, concur with the Sacred Scriptures to prove that, in the earliest ages, it existed in Egypt and Palestine in the domestic state.

The

Herodotus describes it under the name of "Aλovgos. manners of this animal carefully observed, the habit which the male cats have of eating their young, related by the father of history, and confirmed by modern naturalists, the terror inspired in it by fire, the honours which were rendered to cats, their being embalmed, and their mode of sepulture, facts confirmed by the numerous mummies of cats that have been brought from Egypt, and which, moreover, positively determine the species;all these circumstances together remove all doubts, 1st, respecting the identity of the species known to the Greeks under the name of gos, and worshipped and embalmed in Egypt;

*Tom. i. p. 165.

Ibid. p. 210.

+ Tom. viii. p. 206. Levrault's edition.