iiirropoTAMrs. 165 



if not all, from iiiioccnc formations. In the Old World the following fossil genera are of most im- 

 portance, viz. ExTELonoN, Ch.eropotamus, Hyothekium, Adapts, besides fossil species of the present 

 genus Sus. Of some of tlicso, representative genera have been found in the fossilifcrous beds of 

 the Mauvaises Terres. 



HiPPOPOTAAius. (Map 29.) The Common Hippopotamus (H. amphibius) is found in (he Nile, 

 the Niger, the Senegal, and most of the rivers of South Africa. Many of them are separated 

 from each other by vast tracts of arid desert, across which it is not easy to conceive how an 

 animal, so dependent upon water for existence, could ever have passed, unless at some former 

 i:)eriod what is now sandy plain were plashy marsh, a metamorjihosis whicli we know to be 

 periodically occurring in similar ground, and under not very dissimilar circumstances in some 

 parts of Central Africa, and in Australia at the present da}'. Attempts have been made to 

 separate the Hippoijotamus of tlie South of Africa from that of Abyssinia and Senegal, but the 

 separation has not been adopted by naturalists. Another smaller but quite distinct species has 

 been found in tlie River St. Paul, a few degrees north of the Equator, in Liberia, "West Africa. 

 It has only one pair of incisors in each jaw instead of two, and has been described by jSIr. Morton, 

 of Philadelphia, under the name of H. minor. The species rests upon two crania, which are all 

 that liave yet reached the hands of osteologists, but tlie characters arc so marked tliat tlie species 

 has since been erected into a separate genus by Dr. Leidy under the name of Chceropsis 

 LiBERiExsis. A species, spoken of inider the name of Succatyro-, has been at various times talked 

 of as still existing in the Sunda Isles. Marsden mentions it in his " History of Sumatra ;" but 

 there seems no ground for the statement. It is, doubtless, a perversion of the Tapir. 



The range of the Hippopotamus in past times was more extended than at jiresent. No 

 trace of it, however, either li\'ing or fossil, has been found in America. Fossil remains 

 of several species have been found in the Sevalik miocene beds, and in pliocene and post- 

 pliocene deposits over the greatest part of j\Iid and South Europe. It appears to have been 

 plentiful in France, and not scarce in Belgium and the south of England. Great numbers of 

 remains have been found in Algeria, in Sardinia, Corsica, Italy, more esjDecially in the Val 

 d'Arno, but the quantity found in Sicily vastlj- surpasses that found anywhere else ; in fact, such 

 enormous quantities of the bones and teeth occur there, that for a time the)' were exported in 

 ship-loads to France and England for making lamp-black and manure, until it was discovered 

 that they were so far fossilized as to have lost their gelatine. " In 1829," says Dr. Fal- 

 coner, " there was a great demand for the manufacture of lamp-black for sugar-refining. 

 The superficial bones of the San Giro cavern* were collected in large quantities, and exported 

 to England and Marseilles. Professor Ferrara states tliat within tlie first six months four hundred 

 quintals were procured from San Giro. The great majority belonged to two species of Hippopotamus. 

 In one heap out of several ship-loads sent to Marseilles, De Christol, an able palaeontologist, had found 

 that in a weight of thirty quintals all the bones belonged to Hippopotami, with the exception of 

 a few of Bos and Cem(S."f Dr. Falconer believed these immense quantities to be the accumu- 

 lations of a series of generations. An interestinff circumstance connected with the remains of 

 the Hippopotamus in Sicily is that Dr. Falconer and Baron Anca found some of them in 



* " Grotto di San Cii-o," or " JIare Dolce," at the foot of Jtonto GrifTone, about two miles from Falermo. 

 t FALCONEn, ia " Journal of the Geological Society," 1860, 101. 



