268 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



northwards to the cataracts of the Nile, and it extends 

 westwards to Senegal ; but while for several centuries it 

 has been very seldom met with on the Nile below the 

 entrance of the Atbara and Blue Nile, there is abundant 

 evidence that in the time of the Pharaohs it was common 

 in Egypt, where in the temple of Edfu, as well as several 

 other buildings, there are frescoes representing the mode in 

 which it was hunted and speared. That the hippopotamus 

 is the animal indicated in the Book of Job under the name 

 of behemoth is, according to Canon Tristram, undoubted, 

 but there is no evidence that the Jews were acquainted 

 with it otherwise than during their sojourn in Egypt. It 

 is true, indeed, that the writer just mentioned suggests 

 that its range may have extended eastwards as far as 

 Palestine, but this is mere conjecture, and had the creature 

 ever lived there the expeditions which have from time to 

 time explored that country ought to have found some of 

 its remains. In the Pleistocene and upper Pliocene deposits 

 of Southern and Central Europe there occur, however, 

 numerous remains of a hippopotamus which cannot be speci- 

 fically distinguished from the existing African form, although 

 it is generally of rather larger size. The difference in size 

 was at one time thought to indicate that the fossil form 

 was a distinct species, but the discovery many years ago 

 of a half-fossilised jaw in the alluvium of the Nile near 

 Kalabshi, in Nubia, showed that in former times the 

 African hippopotamus attained dimensions as large as the 

 European form. In England the hippopotamus ranged at 

 least as far north as Leeds, and it is a remarkable circum- 

 stance that in many places its remains have been found 

 in association with those of the reindeer. How animals 

 now inhabiting countries with such totally different climatic 

 conditions as tropical Africa and Lapland could have lived 



