of Nature," observes Prof. Jones, "the scavengers are by no means the least important agents. In hot climates, especially, where putrefaction advances with so much rapidity, were there not efficient and active officers continually employed in speedily removing all dead carcases and carrion, the air would be perpetually contaminated with pestilential effluvia, and entire regions rendered uninhabitable by the accumulation of putrefying flesh. Perhaps, however, no localities could be pointed out more obnoxious to such a frightful cause of pestilence, than the banks of tropical rivers—those gigantic streams, which, pouring their waters from realm to realm, daily roll down towards the sea the bloated remains of thousands of creatures which taint the atmosphere by their decomposition."[1]
Here, then, is the appointed dwelling-place of the Loricata. Lurking in the dense reeds, or tangled herbage that grows rank and teeming at the edges of rivers in hot climates, or under the mangroves that interweave their myriad roots in arches above the water, or concealed among the bleaching trunks and branches of trees that have fallen into the stream, these huge reptiles watch for the approach of a living prey, or feed at leisure on the putrid carcases with which the waters daily supply them. It is even affirmed that they prefer a condition of putrescence in their prey, and that their practice, when not pressed by immediate hunger, is, on seizing a living prey, to plunge into the stream in order to drown it, after which, it is dragged away to some hole, and stored until decomposition has commenced.
- ↑ General Outline, 559.
