lightning are not the thunder and lightning which I remember. Roses are
degenerating. The Fannies of our island--though this I say with
reluctance--are not visibly improving; and the Bath road is notoriously
superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton
tells me that the crocodile does _not change_,--that a cayman, in
fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the
time of the Pharaohs. _That_ may be; but the reason is that the
crocodile does not live fast--he is a slow coach. I believe it is
generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a
blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also
blockheads. Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over
Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed
through innumerable generations on the Nile. The crocodile made the
ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own
eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met that
mistake by another: he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to
worship, but always to run away from. And this continued till Mr.
Waterton [Footnote: "_Mr. Waterton_":--Had the reader lived through
the last generation, he would not need to be told that, some thirty or
thirty-five years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman
of ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top-
boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent,
but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but
vainly. He was no more able to throw the squire than Sinbad was to
throw the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until
he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think not)
of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of
unhorsing him.] changed the relations between the animals. The mode of
escaping from the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but by
leaping on its back booted and spurred. The two animals had