126 proceedings of the academy of [1881. 



June 7. 

 The President, Dr. Ruschenberger, in the chair. 

 Eighteen persons pi-esent. 



The following was ordered to be printed : 



OBSERVATIONS UPON THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 

 BY HENRY C. CHAPMAN, M. D. 



On several different occasions, before and daring the reign of 

 Augustus and of his successors, Antoninus, Commodus, Heleoga- 

 balus, etc., the Hippopotamus was exhibited at Rome. Xaturally 

 one would suppose, therefore, that among the writers of those 

 times a truthful description of this interesting animal would be 

 found. Pliny's ^ account, however, is only a restatement of tlie 

 imperfect and erroneous descriptions of Herodotus and Aristotle, 

 with some mistalies of his own added, while tliose of later Latin 

 writers like Tatius, though better than Pliny's, are still obscure 

 and contain errors. Indeed, the Hippopotamus, as described by 

 Herodotus ^ and Aristotle,^ is so unlike the animal known at the 

 present day, that either these usually most accurate and trust- 

 worthy observers could never have seen the Hippopotamus or 

 else they must have desciibed s6me other animal under that name. 

 About the middle of the sixteenth century it is said that Belon 

 saw the living Hippopotamus at Constantinople, but even so late 

 as the time of Cuvier^ the living animal had not been seen in 

 Western Europe. The London Zoological Garden, I believe, has 

 the credit of iiaving been the first in modern times (during 1850) 

 to exhibit the living Hippopotamus. 



So far as I know, the first dissection of this animal was mad.e 

 in 1764, by Daubenton.-^ The specimen, however, being a female 



1 De animalibus, Lib. viii, cap. xxxix ; Lib. ix, cap. xiv. 

 - Historia, Lib. ii, cap. Ixxi. 



* Historia Animalium, Lib. ii, cap. iv. 



* Ossemens Fossiles, Tome deuxieme, p. 383. 



5 Histoire naturelle, &c., avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Tome 

 douzieme, 1764, p. 50. Supplement to Buffon. 



