BABIES AS BAIT. Science Siftings.

North Otago Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 8876, 14 April 1897, Page 4

BABIES AS BAIT. Science Siftings.

Crocodiles like to eat babies, not their own awkward offspring, bub human darlings, fab and dimpled. Skinny babies are nob adapted to the crocodilian palate and are passed by, almosb with scorn. Bat an alligabor will crawl a very long disbance for a fab one. This liking of the sanrian for babies is ntilieed by hunters in Ceylon to lure the reptiles to their death. A nice, fat baby is tied by the leg to a stake near some pond or lagoon where crocodiles abound. So, soon as the child begins crying the sound attracts those crocodiles wlbhin hearing distance. They slart out immediately for the howliog infant. The hunter in the meantime concaals himself in the bushes or swamp grass near the b&by, with a rifle in his hand projecting oub almost over the child. He remains perfectly quiet and the reptile inbeab on its prey.

notices nothing bat the streaming and kicking child. As the alligator ap proachea to within a few feet of the enccolent bait, the banter tends a ballet directly into the hungry mon* star's eye, causing instant death. A miss woald mean death for the infant — death in its most ghastly form — but the hunters are expert shots, and at the short distance at which they fire, a miss is next to impossible. Aa a rale the eonnd of the firearm frightens the baby worse than (he proximity of the crocodile's j^ws and the rows of teeth ; bat, after being shob over a few times, tbe child takes the shooting as a matter of coarse and pays little attention to it. So expert are many of the hunters that they do not shoob the alligator unbil it has approached to within several fee* of the b»by. Then, with but a few inched of space between tbe muzzle of the rifle and tbe alligator, a shot is fired that ends th9 existence of the reptile and saves the child. A recent issae of a Ceylon newspaper contained the following advertisement: "Wated. — Some very fat childrea as bait for crocodile bnnU ing ; we guarantee to return them safe and sound to the homes of the parents.— App'y, »." Thia startling advertisement which is inserted in all seriousness, mikes its appearance regularly in the Ceylon papers, and is said to be productive of good results, But those Cinglese mothers mast surely be different) from most mothers, or else they have an extraordinarily high opinion of tbe ability and skill of the men who hunt crocodiles with human bait.