His Inside

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 135, 7 May 1891, Page 3

His Inside

The Melbourne Age of tbe l7thult. fays: — The post mortem proceedings on the bulky remains of tbe saurian ' which has been the leading attraction • .at the Aquarium for some months J>aß , were performed yesterday under > the superintendence of Mr Cole, taxidermist. The captors of the reptile -were of opinion when they roughs lini to Melbourne, that he was of the . female persuasion, and his refusal to' itake food,fc»r a long time after his installation in his quarters in the Ex . -hibition . building, was attributed t ■ •simple feminine perversity, but the •autopsy revealed the fact that he be•louged to the " sterner" sex, and his "voluntary starvation was thereupon -attributed to a. higher motive than mere caprice;, it was evident he re jseuted being kept in captivity, and remembered the cruel subterf uge -a ; dead dog and a strong noosed rope — .■by which he was made a prisoner. "When, however, his " liver, lungs .and spleen" come to be examined it •was found that, like many other .males, he had in his younger days not been always careful in selecting his :diet, that he had swallowed substances .•extremely difficult of digestion, aud that those had stuck, not in his gizzard, but his liver. In the dim and distant past, probably when good provender was scarce, he had H stayed ,iis, stomach" with' stones — perhaps he had' a taste for geological rest a roh — as no less than 64 of these products of the erosion of .rocks were found in his liver ; sometimes he bad varied his alimeut and partaken of fencing, wire, probably on a Queensland station; a rifle bullet had furnished a further | variety, than a change had been eought .in wooden fare, and a small twig testified to the cosmopolitan nature of his appetite. Last of all his attraction toward the softer sex was made apparent, as the photo of a lady was disclosed, nicely rolled up and in as good a state of preservation •as its keeping place permitted it t > be. Literally, the, reptile had worn the photo next his heart. The organ and his lungs were congested, and his digestive apparatus was also out of order, so that it was evident he died from natural causes, to wit, undue indulgence of his appetite at one period of his existence, followed by unnatural abstemiousness and mental perturbation at another. The skin of the defunct, alligator will be stuffed, and in this form the alligator is likely to remain a familiar object at the Aquarium for a long time to come.