File:Reptiles and birds - a popular account of their various orders, with a description of the habits and economy of the most interesting (1883) (14749974664).jpg

Identifier: reptilesbirds00figu (find matches)
Title: Reptiles and birds : a popular account of their various orders, with a description of the habits and economy of the most interesting
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Figuier, Louis, 1819-1894 Gillmore, Parker
Subjects: Reptiles Birds
Publisher: London : Cassell & Co.
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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t of the body, which is of ayellowish green. Formerly Crocodiles were found in all partsof the Nile, but lately it is said that they are no longer to be metwith until the Thebaid and Upper Nile is reached, where theyexist in great numbers. They are also found in the rivers Senegaland Niger, also in streams in Caffraria and Madagascar. They alsoexist in India. The Crocodile was considered a sacred animal by the ancientEgyptians. In ruins of temples mummies of crocodiles are stillfound in a perfect state of preservation. The Romans introducedliving crocodiles at the national games in the Colosseum. At firstonly five were imported, under the fedileship of Scaurus. Underthe Emperor Augustus thirty-six were killed in the circus ofFlaminius. Several ancient medals represent this reptile, the bodyof which perfectly resembles those now found in the Nile. There isa truly wonderful fact in the natural history of the crocodile.Listen to what Herodotus, the father of history, tells us with regard
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ALLIGATORS. 135 to it:— When the crocodile takes his food in the Nile, theinterior of its mouth is always covered with bdella (flies). All birds,with one single exception, flee from the crocodile ; but this one, theNile Bird, far from avoiding it, flies towards the reptile with thegreatest eagerness, and renders it a very essential service. Everytime the crocodile goes on shore to sleep, and at the moment whenit lies extended with open jaws, the Nile Bird enters the mouth ofthe terrible animal and delivers it from the bdelia which it findsthere ; the crocodile shows its recognition of the service, by neverharming the bird. This fact, reported by Herodotus, was long conside^-ed to be afable, but the naturalist,( Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who formedpart of the commission Ihat General Bonaparte took with him inhis expedition into Egypt, had on several occasions opportunitiesof proving the truth of the historians narrative. In a memoir read to the Academy of Sciences on tlie 28th

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