HIPPOPOTAMUS 405 



they were lead-coloured. The discrimination of such races has, how- 

 ever, yet to be undertaken, although the name Hippopotamus ampJiibius 

 senegalensis is available for the western representative of the species. 



A full-grown hippopotamus will measure about 14 feet to the root 

 of the short tail, and weigh at least 3 tons. 



The following account of hippopotamuses in southern Africa is 

 abbreviated, and otherwise slightly modified from one written by Mr. 

 Selous in 1899. It will be noticed from this account that the colonial 

 translation of the Boer name zee-koe is " sea-cow " ; this, however, is 

 incorrect, the proper rendering being, of course, " lake-cow." 



In southern Africa, writes Mr. Selous, " the range of the hippo- 

 potamus has been much curtailed during the last century, not only by 

 the encroachments of man, but also by the gradual desiccation of the 

 western portion of the country. Natives now living remember the 

 time when these animals were abundant in the Molopo river, where 

 they could not exist at the present day; and Livingstone mentions that, 

 according to native report, they used to inhabit the river flowing from 

 the spring of Kuruman, which even in his time (1840 to 1850) had 

 become a small stream. In Cape Colony and Natal the hippopotamus 

 is now extinct ; an old bull was long allowed to live in the Berg river 

 at no great distance from Cape Town, but it became vicious and killed 

 a boy, and so had to be destroyed. 



"This was between i860 and 1870, and in 1898 the fiat went 

 forth for the extermination of the hippopotamuses preserved in Sea-Cow 

 Lake near Durban, Natal, as it was found impossible to keep them any 

 longer owing to the damage they did in the neighbouring sugar-planta- 

 tions. Elsewhere hippopotamuses were, however, abundant not many 

 years ago in every lake and river on the east coast, from Zululand to 

 the Zambesi, along the greater part of the course of the Limpopo, and 

 in almost every river in the vast territory between the latter and the 

 Zambesi. They were also abundant in the Chobi and the Botletli. 

 During various journeys I travelled along the course of the Zambesi 

 for about looo miles between the Barotsi valley and the sea, but 

 though I met with hippopotamuses in almost every part of the river, I 

 found them really numerous only in two places — namely, near Sekhosi, 

 about 40 miles above the junction of the Zambesi with the Chobi, and 

 below the Kariba gorge, where I saw, in November 1877, over a 

 hundred, in herds of fifteen or twenty, in less than a couple of miles. 

 Hippopotamuses were formerly common in many of the rivers ot 

 Matabililand and Mashonaland, especially in the Umniati and its 

 tributaries on the northern watershed, and in the Lunti to the south ; 



