The Crocodile.
The largest of the Saurians which we have left us, is the Crocodile; and it formerly had the character of
being very deceitful, and, by its weeping, attracted its victims. Sir John Mandeville thus describes them:—“In this land, and many other places of Inde, are many cocodrilles, that is a maner of a long serpent, and on nights they dwell on water, and on dayes they dwell on land and rocks, and they eat not in winter. These serpents sley men, and eate them weeping, and they have no tongue.”
On the contrary, the Crocodile has a tongue, and a very large one too. As to the fable of its weeping, do we not even to this day call sham mourning, “shedding crocodile’s tears?” Spenser, in his “Faerie Queene,” thus alludes to its supposed habits (B. I. c. 5. xviii.):—
“As when a wearie traveller, that strayes
By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile,
Unweeting of the perillous wandring wayes,
Doth meete a cruell craftie crocodile,
Which in false griefe hyding his harmeful guile,
Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender tears: