418 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



cases to help landowners by putting up wire fences to keep them out. 

 A very low fence suffices to stop a hippo, who will not step over even 

 a low obstacle and does not seem to push through a wire fence." The 

 protected herd in Natal also seems to be flourishing at present. 

 Here, according to H. B. Potter, Game Conservator, there were in 

 1933 in the False Bay and St. Lucia Lake area, "about 100 hippo- 

 potami in the whole area, sixty of which have their home in St. 

 Lucia Lake." In the following year Mr. Potter reported that in the 

 latter area they were doing well, calves had been seen, and no deaths 

 had been noted during the year, nor any accidents to visitors caused 

 by them. Evidently here as in Kruger Park they form an attraction 

 to visitors and should continue so for the future. 



In South-West Africa, according to Shortridge (1934, vol. 2, p. 644) 

 a few still survive in the lower Cunene, "probably because the nar- 

 rowly reed-fringed banks of that river are unpopulated and seldom 

 visited. ... It is doubtful if more than a dozen hippo remain to- 

 day between the Rua Cana Falls and the mouth of the Cunene." 

 There are "very few" in the middle section of the Okavango, "per- 

 haps half a dozen," but in the Caprivi district they seem to be 

 "fairly plentiful." In the adjacent parts of Angola there are a good 

 many, though according to Statham "disappearing more rapidly than 

 any other game." Shortridge reports that in 1914-15, after a particu- 

 larly dry period, when the Cunene almost ceased to flow, they were 

 nearly exterminated by squatters in southern Angola. Yet they are 

 still common in the upper Okavango and the Kwando as well as in 

 the rivers between. The reduction in numbers in the general region 

 is in part a result of the gradual drying out of the country in recent 

 decades. According to Selous (in Bryden, 1899) , at the end of the 

 last century, "natives now living remember the time when hippo- 

 potami were plentiful in the Molopo River, where these animals 

 could not exist at the present day; and Dr. Livingstone mentions 

 that, according to native report, hippopotami used to live in the river 

 flowing from the spring of Kuruman, which even in his time had 

 become quite a small stream." 



While adult Hippos seem to have no natural enemies other than 

 man, it may be that crocodiles occasionally capture the young. 

 There is some evidence, however, that they are subject to occasional 

 epizootic disease. Of this, Hobley (1932, p. 21) writes of a report by 

 the captain of a river steamer, that in 1904 or 1905 a serious epizootic 

 occurred among Hippos on the Kasai and Sankuru Rivers in the 

 Congo basin from which "vast numbers" died. Again, in the Annual 

 Report of the Uganda Game Department for 1932, it is stated that 

 sixty were counted dead "from a mysterious disease on a short 

 stretch of shore of Lake Albert." However, the herds that were 

 decimated quickly recovered. 



