Miscellaneous. 515 



To give some idea of the extraordinary price which is now some- 

 times required for shells, I may state that the second specimen of 

 this Cowry, sent home by Mr. Gunn to a London collector, was 

 offered by him to Miss Saul for 56*30, and eventually realised that 

 price. — From the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for Nov. 1849. 



THE HIPPOPOTAMUS AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



To the Editor of the Annals of Natural History. 



My Dear Sir, — I send you a few notes on the newly-arrived Hip- 

 popotamus, whilst the impressions of the survey of this truly extra- 

 ordinary quadruped are fresh in the mind, and thinking they may 

 interest our zoological friends in the country who have not yet had 

 the opportunity of inspecting this great rarity. 



The young Hippopotamus was safely housed in the comfortable 

 quarters prepared for it at the Zoological Gardens about 10 o'clock 

 on Saturday night (May 25th), having arrived by special train from 

 Southampton, where it was landed from the ' Ripon ' steamer which 

 reached that port early in the morning. The strong attachment of 

 the animal to its keeper removed every difficulty in its various trans- 

 fers from ship to train, and from waggon to its actual abode. On 

 arriving at the Gardens, the Arab who has had the charge of it 

 walked first out of the transport van, with a bag of dates over his 

 shoulder, and the beast trotted after him, now and then lifting up its 

 huge grotesque muzzle and sniffing at its favourite dainties, with 

 which it was duly rewarded on entering its apartment. When I 

 saw the Hippopotamus the next morning, it was lying on its side in 

 the straw with its head resting against the chair on which its swarthy 

 attendant sat ; it now and then uttered a soft complacent grunt, and, 

 lazily opening its thick smooth eyelids, leered at its keeper with a sin- 

 gular protruding movement of the eyeball from the prominent socket, 

 showing an unusual proportion of the white, over which large con- 

 junctival vessels converged to the margin of the cornea. The retrac- 

 tion of the eyeball is accompanied by a protrusion of a large and 

 thick * palpebra nictitans,' and by a simultaneous rolling of the ball 

 obliquely downwards and inwards or forwards. 



The young animal was captured at the beginning of August 1849, 

 on the banks of the Nile about 350 miles above Cairo : it was sup- 

 posed to have been recently brought forth, being not much bigger 

 than a new-born calf, but much stouter and lower. The attention of 

 the hunters was attracted to the thick bushes on the river's bank in 

 which the young animal was concealed, by the attempt of its mor^ 

 tally wounded mother to return to the spot. When discovered, the 

 calf made a rush to the river, and had nearly escaped owing to the 

 slipperiness of its naked lubricous skin, and was only secured by one 

 of the men striking the boat-hook into its flank : it was then hfted 

 by one of the men into the boat. The cicatrix of the wound is still 

 visible on the middle of its left side : the attendant informed me that 

 the scar was much nearer the haunch when the animal first arrived at 

 Cairo ; its relative position has changed with the growth of the body, 



33* 



