NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 67 



Talk while yon may, you will hold your breath 

 Wlien they meet in the grasp of the glowing death ! 

 Tramp ! tramp ! how gaily they go ! 

 Ho ! ho ! for the merry merry show ! 



The ancients believed that great enmity existed be- 

 tween the hippopotamus and the crocodile ; and that they 

 bear no very good will to each other may be very pos- 

 sible ; but near neighbours as they are, dangerous enough 

 perhaps, Nature has so provided for them, offensively and 

 defensively, that they, most probably, maintain an armed 

 neutrality. 



The hippopotamus did not escape the medical practi- 

 tioners of old. Pliny and others show how it enriched 

 the pharmacopoeia. We spare our readers the various 

 prescriptions, merely observing, that the teeth were famous 

 against the toothache, and that the mother who could 

 procure some of the brain had only to rub the gums of 

 her infant with it to deliver the poor dear baby from the 

 torments of teething. We must not omit that the animal 

 'was considered a master of the art of healing, from his 

 alleged habit of letting blood by pressing the vein of his 

 leg against a sharp stake, or stout, broken, sharp-pointed 

 reed, when his constitution required it. 



If we are so fortunate as to overcome the difficulties 

 of rearing and of the passage, and lodge the young hip- 

 popotamus, now sojourning in Egypt, safely in the 

 Regent's Park, how different will the spirit of the British 

 people who will crowd to see it be from that with which 

 the sanguinary Romans, high and low, beheld the same 

 form ! We shall have the privilege of peaceably enjoy- 

 ing the sight of this peaceable animal, anxious, in its un- 

 couth way, to show its good will to those who show good 

 will to it, instead of lusting for the terrible excitement of 

 the amphitheatre. 



Commodus, on one occasion, exhibited five ; and des- 

 cending into the arena butchered some of these wretched 



