Though generally fleeing from man upon terra firma, the alligator will quickly attack him in the water.  A friend of mine, mounted upon his horse, was crossing a Florida river in the wilderness, when entering the channel of the stream, the horse’s feet did not touch the bottom, and he swam for a moment or two, struggling with the current.  My friend suddenly felt a severe grip upon his leg, and the pressure of sharp teeth through his trousers, when, realizing in a flash that an alligator’s jaws were fastened upon him, he clasped the neck of his horse with all his strength.  For a few seconds he was in danger of being dragged from the back of his faithful animal; but his dog, following in the rear, gained quickly on the struggling horse, and the alligator, true to his well-known taste, loosed his hold upon the man, and catching the dog in his strong jaws, dragged the poor brute to the bottom of the river.

The alligator is fast disappearing from our principal southern rivers, and is also being captured in considerable numbers in isolated bayous by hunters, who kill the creature for his hide, as the alligator boots have a durability not possessed by any other leather.

There is much interest connected with the discovery of the existence of the true crocodile (C. acutus) in the Floridian peninsula.  While the alligators have broader heads, shorter snouts, and more numerous teeth than the crocodiles, the unscientific hunter can at once identify the true crocodile (C. acutus) by two holes in the upper jaw, into which and through which the two principal teeth or tushes of the lower jaw protrude, and can be seen by looking down upon the head of the animal.  The longest teeth of the alligator do not thus protrude through the head or snout, but fit into sockets in the upper jaw.  I first studied the true crocodile in the island of Cuba, where there are two distinct species of the genus, one of which is our Florida species (C. acutus).  At that time science was blind to the fact that the true crocodile was a member of the fauna of the United States.  At a meeting of the “Boston Society of Natural History,” held May 19, 1869, the late comparative anatomist, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, exhibited the head of a crocodile (C. acutus) which had been sent him by William H. Hunt, Esq., of Miami River, which stream flows out of the everglades and empties into Key Biscayene Bay, at the south-eastern end of the Floridian peninsula.

A second cranium of the Sharp-nosed Crocodile was afterwards obtained from the same locality, but the honor of killing and recognizing one of these huge monsters belongs to the young and enterprising author of the “Birds of Florida,” a work full of original information, the illustrations of which, as well as the setting up of the type, being the work of the author’s own hands.  I refer to Mr. C. J. Maynard, of Newtonville, Massachusetts, who has furnished me with a graphic description of his meeting with, and the capture of, the crocodile while engaged in his ornithological pursuits during the year 1867.  Mr. Maynard says: