JUST HATCHED.
"In regions where these reptiles abound, the natives have adopted the sensible plan of destroying the eggs whenever they find a nest. The nests are made in the sand or on a bank of earth, and the female alligator usually lays from twenty to forty—rarely more than the latter number. They are hatched by the heat of the sun: the mother does not sit on the nest like a hen, but she stays in the neighborhood and fights for their protection. When the chicks emerge from the shell they hurry off to the water, or to a hiding-place in the mud; and they seem to understand that they will be subject to many dangers until they get large enough to defend themselves. Cranes and fish are fond of them in their tender youth, and even the fathers of the alligator family seem to mistake them for frogs, and eat them with apparent delight.
"In some parts of India the natives dig a circular pit, and cover it with sticks and leaves. The pit surrounds a little island or mound of earth, and is close to a stream where crocodiles abound. On the mound they fasten a young goat, and his bleatings during the night attract the crocodiles, who break the slight floor of sticks with their heavy bodies, and fall into the pit prepared for them. Heavy stakes are set in the bottom of the pit, and as the reptile falls he is generally impaled on one or more of them.
"I have read of a famous old crocodile who defied all the ordinary modes of capture, in one of the rivers of India. Finally an English officer hit upon a trick that was successful. He put a pound of powder in a can, and attached it to an electric wire, so that he could explode it at pleasure; then he placed this can inside the carcass of a sheep, and by means of a rope floated it over where the crocodile lay. The crocodile rose and swallowed the bait; the officer, who was standing ready with his electric battery on the shore, completed the connection of the wires, and an instant afterwards the reptile that had been a terror to the neighborhood had ceased to exist. The can of powder exploded in his stomach, and his body, when it came to the surface, was so torn and distorted that it could hardly be recognized as the remains of a crocodile."
COMING OUT TO SUN HIMSELF.