A native of West Africa, remarkable for the extreme shortness and great breadth of its nozzle.
Photo by Norman B. Smith, Esq.
A DEAD CROCODILE.
A man-eating individual. This particular animal has just been shot. The natives in the background give a good idea of its size—little less than 20 feet long.
Although capable of moving with great activity in the water, crocodiles and their allies are usually accounted sluggish and slow movers on the land. Seen basking in the sun, as is their wont, by the hour together on some sand-bank, or creeping lazily thereon among their fellows, such a conclusion is natural. The celerity, however, with which even a huge 25-footer, as witnessed by the writer in the Norman River, North Queensland, will make tracks for and hurl itself into the water, if disturbed during its midday siesta by the near impact of a rifle-bullet, is a revelation. Crocodiles, moreover, as might be inferred from the slit-like contour of the eye-pupil, as shown by daylight, are to a large extent nocturnal, displaying their greatest activity, and being in the habit of travelling long distances along and away from the river-banks in search of food, or in connection with their migratory or mating instincts, under the cover of darkness.
Photo by Mr. W. Rau] [Philadelphia.
A CROCODILE.
Note the massive character of the tail, a weapon wherewith the creature can disable a horse or an ox, or sweep smaller prey into the water.