ORDER ARTIODACTYLA I EVEN-TOED UNGULATES 419 



From the foregoing it appears that the Hippo is likely to remain 

 in numbers in the upper Nile, the Great Lakes, and parts of the 

 Congo, and a certain number are well protected and thriving in 

 parts of Tanganyika, the Transvaal (Kruger Park), and Natal 

 (St. Lucia Lake reserve) . Their numbers are being reduced in parts 

 of the French Equatorial possessions, and on the borders of the 

 range in the west; in South-West Africa they are being rather rapidly 

 reduced in some sections, but remain common in others; but are 

 likely to continue their retreat from the drier parts, with desiccation 

 of the country. In South Africa, particularly, except for the herds 

 in the reserves mentioned, the animal is gone. Given sufficient pro- 

 tection, however, there seems no reason to suppose that it may not 

 continue to thrive in regions where it is now still common, and with 

 proper management might in addition be a source of food for the 

 native population and of interest to visitors. 



G. M. A. 



Pygmy Hippopotamus 



CHOEROPSIS LIBERIENSIS (Morton) 



Hippopotamus (Tetraprotodon) liberiensis Morton, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. 



Philadelphia, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 232, 1849. (St. Paul's River, Liberia.) 

 FIGS.: Morton, op. cit., 1849, pis. 32-34; Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1923, p. 1096, 



fig.; Pocock, 1937, p. 643, fig. 



The Pigmy Hippo has always been a little-known species. Even in 

 the region where it exists, one may travel for days through the coun- 

 try and find nothing of it. In general much like a smaller replica of 

 the large Hippo, it is a stoutly built animal about the size of a domes- 

 tic pig. Biittikofer (1890), who spent several years in zoological 

 work in Liberia, describes its color as shining grayish blue-black. It 

 differs from the big Hippo further in the smaller proportions of the 

 head, and in usually having only one pair instead of two pairs of 

 lower incisors. The feet have the toes slightly more separate and 

 spreading. Length, about 1.4 meters; height, 80 cm. 



Although skulls much like that of this species are found in super- 

 ficial deposits in Madagascar, and fragments of related type in the 

 Mediterranean islands, indicating a former wider distribution, the 

 living species is known only from a restricted area in the rivers and 

 primeval forests, of the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and the adjacent parts 

 of Sierra Leone. The statements of Haywood that it is found in the 

 Niger Delta, 1 and of Lavauden of its occurrence in the Gabun 



i More recently, however, confirmation of the animal's occurrence in Nigeria 

 has been supplied by Dollman (1940), on the basis of two skulls sent to the 

 British Museum from the Owerri and Warri Provinces. "It is possible," Doll- 

 man adds (p. 288), "that the range of this animal may be even still -greater 

 than is at present known and may extend into French Equatorial Africa." F. H. 



