416 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



that in the latter case, it mistakes the boat for a crocodile and at- 

 tacks to drive the supposed enemy from its young, or merely on 

 principle. 



While Hippos are still common in many parts of Africa, as in 

 the upper Nile, parts of the Congo, the Great Lakes, and elsewhere, 

 they have become reduced in the more settled areas or entirely 

 exterminated. A brief review of the present status may therefore be 

 given. S. S. Flower (1932) places the last recorded Hippopotamus 

 in the Nile Delta at about 1815, when one appears to have been 

 killed near Damietta. In the following year, one is mentioned by 

 Burckhardt at Deran, 23 miles north of AJswan. Within recent years 

 they are not regularly found below the junction of the White and the 

 Blue Niles at Khartoum. Capt. Flower about 1908 saw the tracks 

 of one at that point, but regarded the circumstance as very unusual 

 even then. In 1912, the late Dr. John C. Phillips and I, in going up 

 the Blue Nile, saw nothing of Hippos until well above Singa. Higher 

 up they were still to be found in small numbers. They are^ said to be 

 common in southern Abyssinia, in parts of Somaliland, and even in 

 the Lorian Swamp, Kenya Colony, a region which may at times be 

 much dried out, they seem common, seeking the deeper pools when 

 the stream goes partly dry. They are common in the Great Lakes of 

 East Africa, and according to the Annual Report of the Game 

 Department of Uganda, 1933, "there is little realization of the almost 

 incredible and, I believe, steadily increasing, numbers which frequent 

 the shores of .the Victoria Nyanza and its islands." Indeed, in the 

 1927 report, it " is classed as vermin in Lakes Victoria, Albert, 

 Edward and George, and in the River Nile ; and as there is a ready 

 sale for its teeth a certain amount of trading takes place in this com- 

 modity, but so far this fact has resulted in no undue slaughter, and 

 the hippopotamus is quite as plentiful, and in many places as great 

 a nuisance, as ever." 



In the Belgian Congo it was formerly abundant in all the rivers, 

 lakes, and pools. According to Leplae (1925), "it is now [1925] 

 shot or trapped by hundreds by meat-hunters, white and native. 

 Its ivory brings a good price, and its skin is used for making whips. 

 Its flesh is highly esteemed by the blacks, and even Europeans eat 

 it upon occasion. Owing to the enormous slaughter in the Belgian 

 Congo, some rivers are already entirely depopulated." Lavauden 

 writes hi 1933, however, that it is still widely spread in Central 

 Africa, and that while it is not seriously threatened in French 

 Equatorial Africa, the same cannot be said of French West Africa. 

 A reserve on Lake Edward has permitted its survival there. In view 

 of the fact that it provides natives with meat, its hunting should 

 be limited and controlled. The extent to which Hippos are being 

 destroyed to furnish meat to laborers in the Chad territory is indi- 



