188 LEAVES FROM THE 



inspection, to be covered with very fine downy hairs, 

 which will, probably, totally or partially vanish as the 

 animal advances in age. 



The gambols and civilities of this denizen of the Nile 

 are not confined to his keepers. I had been told that, 

 when out in the giraffe-paddock, one of the giraffes had 

 bowed down its head to him one day, and that the hip- 

 popotamus opened his mouth and took the giraffe's 

 muzzle into the gulf, which seems to be his way of kiss- 

 ing. On Sunday, the 9th of June, I saw one of the 

 giraffes do the same thing, with exactly the same result. 

 He had, I have been told, formed an acquaintance with 

 a giraffe which was to have been brought over with him, 

 but was unfortunately drowned. 



Such is the quadruped whose animal magnetism Punch 

 has so forcibly depicted attracting the crowds who are 

 hurrying to its presence. If a mate — and this is far from 

 improbable — should be sent over to join him in August 

 by the same liberal and friendly potentate to whom we 

 owe the present object of admiration, who shall predict 

 the consequence of the double attraction ? 



The third Gordian did not live to see the portentous 

 games for which he had caused so vast an assemblage of 

 wild beasts to be brought to Rome. The onilliarium 

 swculum was celebrated by Philip not without suspicion, 

 almost amounting to proof, that the blood of his prede- 

 cessor was on his head. Philip, in his turn, did not live 

 long after the celebration of that 23rolonged festival, dur- 

 ing which two thousand gladiators at once joined in the 

 death-struggle for the gratification of the people. De- 

 feated by Decius, who had got himself proclaimed em- 

 peror in Pannonia, Philip fell under the merciless hands 

 of his own soldiers near Yerona, in the year of Christ 249, 

 before he had completed his forty-fifth year, and before 

 the fifth year of his enjoyment of his bad eminence had 

 run its course. The hippopotamus, which formed a prin- 



