"Usually one finds them in the waters of the smaller streams and ponds, lying with only the tip of the nose and the eyes exposed, or lying on an exposed place on the bank where the grass and other plants are beaten down, and the black, rich mud of the river bank is smoothed by the repeated movements of the alligators in climbing up and down. There they bask in the sunlight until disturbed by the hunter or the desire for food. When aroused they make for the bottom, and I have never waited long enough to see one return unless he were vigorously stimulated with a long pole. They frequently dig a cave for themselves in the bottom of the pond or stream, or in the bank beneath the water. Oftentimes one can start them out of the cave by using a pole, but if very obstinate, the hunters dig them out with spades.
Fig. 112.–Skull of Alligator mississippiensis. A, Dorsal; B, ventral; C, lateral view. Ag, Angular bone of mandible; Cd, occipital condyle; Ch, choanae or posterior narial openings–the median small hole behind them indicates the position of the opening of the Eustachian tubes; Jg, jugal; L, lacrymal; Mx, maxillary; No, nostrils; Pa, palatine; Pm, premaxillary; Pt, pterygoid; Q, quadrate; T, Tr, transverse bone or ectopterygoid.
"As the water decreases in the streams and ponds with the summer heat, the alligators travel to the larger bodies of water. During the breeding season, from the end of May to the beginning of July, the males are very active, wandering about to various ponds and rivers in search of the females. Fierce battles are said to take place during this time between the excited males; and the mutilated specimens that one sees are weighty evidence for the truth of this assertion.... It is in the breeding season also that their bellowing is mostly heard, and more in the night than during the day. I have frequently heard them, while lying in the swamps at night, when they were in ponds fully a mile distant.
"The largest specimen I saw measured 12 feet in length; and none of the many hunters and other natives of Florida I have met have seen any longer than 13 feet. All the hunters agree that it is only the males that acquire the great size; no one had ever seen a female that measured over 8 feet, and the majority are not over seven.
"The male has a heavier, more powerful head, and during the breeding season especially is more brilliantly coloured. The more brilliant colour occurs in patches and streaks on the sides of the head and body; it is generally a light yellow, or even whitish, and on one large male I saw a fairly bright red spot over each eye.
"The alligators are rapidly diminishing in numbers under the stimulus of the high prices offered to the hunters for their hides. Both Whites and Indians make increasing war upon them. Several thousand skins were brought into the little station of Fort Pierce in 1890. The pioneers and settlers always destroy the nests and eggs, because the alligators eat their pigs; and the cleaned eggs and young alligators are sold by hundreds in the curio shops farther north. As their numbers diminish in Florida it is noticed that the Moccasin snakes increase. In Louisiana also the alligators are disappearing; and there the musk-rats are at the same time increasing, and are doing much damage by burrowing in the levees along the Mississippi. While the alligator can make a very stout fight, I have never seen one offer fight if there was any chance of retreat. They never offered to molest us, even when we waded through the ponds where they were.
"The nest of the alligator is very large, and is built by the female. A great quantity of dead leaves and twigs, together with much of the finely divided humus underlying them, is scraped together into a low mound about 3 feet high; this varies considerably in its other dimensions, being in some instances 8 feet in diameter at the base. The nests are built on the bank of a stream or pool, and the female digs a cave under water in the bank close to the nest. Careful examination, of the largest nest found showed a root of a neighbouring palmetto-tree, nearly an inch in diameter, running through it at about a foot above the ground; there were also roots of a grape vine growing near, which extended nearly through the nest. This furnishes strong support to the statement of many of the hunters, that the nests are used for more than one season. I could get no evidence whatever that the nests are used more than once a year.
"The eggs are laid near the top of the nest, within 8 inches of the surface, are four or five layers deep, and have no regular arrangement or uniform position of their axes in relation to the nest. The number of eggs to a nest varies from twenty to thirty, and averages twenty-eight; the maximum found was forty-seven.
The eggs are white, elliptical, and vary in length from 50 to 90 mm. or 2 to 3½ inches, and in the shorter diameter from 28 to 45 mm. Generally there is only slight variation in the eggs of one nest, but occasionally a nest is found in which most of the eggs are about the average size, while from two to five are very much smaller.