722 



HIPPOPOTAMUS 



HIPPURITES 



(albino and piebald individuals have been seen), 

 destitute of hair, and exudes a reddish fluid, which 

 has been said to have given rise to the legends of 

 sweating blood. The tail is short. The feet have 

 each four toes, nearly equal in size, and hoofed. 

 The neck is short and thick. The head is very 

 large, with small ears, and small eyes placed high, 

 so that they are easily raised above water, without 

 much of the animal being exposed to view. The 

 muzzle is very large, rounded, and tumid, with 

 large nostrils and great lips concealing the large 

 front teeth. The hippopotamus cuts grass or corn 

 as if it were done with a scythe, or bites with its 

 strong teeth a stem of considerable thickness neatly 

 through. The skull, while it is distinguished by 

 remarkable peculiarities, corresponds in the most 

 important characters with that of the hog. The 

 respiration of the hippopotamus is slow, and thus 

 it is enabled to spend much of its time under water, 

 only coming to the surface at intervals to breathe. 

 It swims and dives with great ease, and often walks 

 along the bottom, completely under water. Its 

 food consists chiefly of the plants which grow in 

 shallow waters and about the margins of lakes and 

 rivers ; and it probably renders no unimportant 

 service in preventing slow streams from being choked 

 up by the luxuriance of tropical vegetation, the 

 effect of which would, of course, be an increase of the 

 extent of swampy land. It often, however, leaves 

 the water, chiefly by night, to feed on the banks, 

 and makes inroads on cultivated fields, devouring 

 and trampling the crops. It is a gregarious animal ; 

 and the havoc wrought by a herd of twenty or 

 thirty is very great, so that wherever cultivation 

 extends war is waged against the hippopotamus, 

 and it disappears from regions where it formerly 

 abounded. Thus it is no longer found in Lower 

 Egypt, although still abundant farther up the 

 Nile. It is taken in pits, which are digged in its 

 usual tracks ; it is killed by poisoned spears, is 

 pursued by means of canoes, is harpooned, and is 

 shot. The flesh is highly esteemed ; the fat, of 

 which there is a thick layer immediately under the 

 skin, is a favourite African delicacy, and when 

 salted is known at the Cape of Good Hope as 

 Zee-koe speck ( ' Lake-cow bacon ' ). The tongue 

 and the jelly made from the feet are also much 

 prized. The hide is used for a variety of purposes ; 

 and the great canine teeth, which sometimes weigh 

 8 or even 12 lb., are particularly valuable as ivory, 

 and are a very considerable article of African 

 commerce. 



The hippopotamus is lively and playful in its 

 native waters ; it soon learns to avoid man ; and, 

 when it cannot retire among reeds for concealment, 

 it dives and remains long under water, raising only 

 its nose to the surface when another breath 

 becomes necessary. The female may sometimes be 

 seen swimming with her young one on her back. 

 The hippopotamus is generally inoffensive, but is 

 occasionally roused to fits of rage, in which it 

 becomes extremely dangerous, particularly to those 

 who pursue it in boats. The voice is loud and 

 harsh, and is likened by Burckhardt to the creaking 

 and gfoaning of a large wooden door. That the 

 animal is capable of being tamed, and of becoming 

 much attached to man, has been sufficiently proved 

 by the instances of living specimens in London and 

 Paris. The first specimen brought to Europe in 

 modern times, a young one from the Nile, arrived 

 in London in 1850. The hippopotamus, however, 

 sometimes appeared in the spectacles of the ancient 

 Somans. It is very generally supposed to be the 

 Behemoth of the book of Job. 



Fossil Species. A number of species of hippo- 

 potamus nave been described from the later 

 Tertiary strata ; but in those times the distribution 

 was not, as it is now, limited to the African con- 



tinent. Their remains have been found in India 

 and Madagascar as well as Europe. They occur in 

 fresh-water marls, and in the bone-caves, into 

 which they had been carried for fcod by the 

 carnivorous animals that used the caves as dens. 

 One species found in England and in considerable 

 abundance in the southern countries of Europe 

 was of a size as much greater than the living 

 species as its companion, the mammoth, was 

 greater than the living elephant. 



Hippuric Acid, C 9 H 9 NO 3 , is a compound of 

 great interest both to the chemist and to the 

 physiologist. It derives its name from its having 

 been first discovered in the urine of the horse, and 

 that fluid, or the renal secretion of the cow, affords 

 us the best and readiest means of obtaining it. 

 The crystals of hippuric acid are moderately large, 

 colourless, but subsequently becoming milk'-white,. 

 four-sided prisms, which are devoid of odour, but 

 have a faintly bitter taste. They dissolve readily 

 in boiling water and in spirit, but are only 

 sparingly soluble in cold water and in ether. It 

 is an abundant normal constituent of the urine of 

 the horse, cow, sheep, goat, hare, elephant, &c., 

 and most probably is to be found in the urine of 

 all vegetable feeders. In the human urine of 

 healthy persons living on an ordinary mixed diet 

 it occurs in very small quantity, but it is increased 

 by an exclusively vegetable diet, and in the well- 

 known disease diabetes. 



The hippuric acid occurring in the animal organ- 

 ism exists in combination with bases, and chiefly a 

 hippurate of soda and hippurate of lime. The last- 

 named salt can be obtained by the mere evapora- 

 tion of the urine of the horse. The chief interest 

 of the substance is that it was one of the first to 

 be discovered of a long series of complex bodies, 

 which we now know are formed synthetically in 

 the animal body. Hippuric acid readily splits into- 

 benzoic acid and glycocoll. If benzoic acid is- 

 administered it is excreted as hippuric acid, com- 

 bining with glycocoll in the body. In herbivorous 

 animals the benzoic acid is largely derived from 

 the food ; in animal feeders even in starvation 

 it occurs in small amount in the urine, and 

 we must therefore conclude that its forerunners- 

 may be derived from the metabolism of the 

 tissues. That certain bodies closely allied to> 

 benzoic acid may be so formed has now been experi- 

 mentally demonstrated, while glycocoll can also; 

 be proved to be so produced. At one time the 

 belief was entertained that these bodies were com- 

 bined in the liver ; but more recent research has 

 shown that the synthesis chiefly takes place in the 

 kidneys. 



Hippurites, a very remarkable genus of fossil 

 bivalves, peculiar to the Cretaceous strata, and so- 

 abundant in some of the Lower Chalk beds of the 

 Pyrenees and other places that the 

 series has received from some con- 

 tinental geologists the name of Hip- 

 purite Limestone. The external form 

 of the shell is so anomalous that the 

 genus has been tossed about by 

 naturalists in an extraordinary man- 

 some having called it a coral, 



others an annelid, others a barnacle, 

 and so on, though the majority held 

 it to be at least a mollusc. The 

 investigations of S. P. Woodward 

 showed that the Hippurites were diver- 

 gent bivalves. The right valve is very 

 large, and elongated into a cone, while 

 the left valve is inconspicuous, often A Hippurite, 

 like a lid, and perforated by radiat- 

 ing canals. Including allied genera or sub-genera 

 e.g. Radiolites and Caprinella there are over a 



