62 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



is the principal performer with the serpents, is, I 

 have heard, his nephew, and is the playfellow of 

 the hippopotamus. When I saw him, on the occa- 

 sion of my first view of his playmate, he had a 

 gold ear-ring and a gold finger-ring, and was clad 

 in fantastic costume, with a feather in his head- 

 gear, and in an old pair of Wellington boots, long 

 since unacquainted with blacking, and a world too 

 wide for his bare shanks. Of these he seemed 

 more proud than of all the rest of his apparel put 

 together, but they so galled his naked feet that 

 they soon brought him to poultices, and he has 

 since taken to stockings and slippers. A complaint 

 has, I hear, been brought against him for teazing 

 the monkeys, which he excites into a frantic state. 

 Sheetan* the name in which he rejoices among 

 his familiars pleaded guilty, and begged hard 

 that one of the monkeys might be assigned to him 

 for education the height of his ambition at pres- 

 ent being to teach his cheiroped scholar to charm 

 serpents. 



His games of romps with the hippopotamus are 

 'first-rate. After a little provocation by eccentric 

 antics, which would have done credit to Flibberti- 

 gibbet himself, he flies, and his obese four-footed 

 frolicsome friend shuffles after him with his mouth 

 open and such a mouth! in all the beauty of 

 ugliness. This playful running after its friends 

 open-mouthed may be interpreted in two ways : 

 first, as it wsuld act with its mother, half in play, 

 half as a hint for nourishment ; and secondly, as 

 a lamb, a goat, or a calf butts, before their horns 

 .have budded, betraying a consciousness on the part 

 of our gambolling pachyderm of the locality where 

 the terrible offensive armour is to be with which 

 hereafter he may bite with a vengeance. 



Professor Owen states that we may reckon this 

 young animal to be tea months old, and that it is 

 now seven feet long, and six and a half feet in 

 girth at the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, 

 which is supported, dear of the ground, on very 

 short and thick legs, each terminated by four spread- 

 ing hoofs, of which the innermost is the smallest 

 on the forefoot ; the two middle ones, answering 

 to those which are principally developed in the hog 

 are the largest in both feet. 



The hind-limb (writes Professor Owen in continu- 

 at*n) is buried in the skin of the flank nearly to the 

 prominence of the heel. Thick flakes of cuticle are 

 in process of detachment from the sole. There is 

 .a well-defined white patch behind each foot, but I 

 looked in vain for any indications of the glandular 

 orifice which exists in the same part in the rhinoc- 

 eros. The naked hide covering the broad back 

 and sides is of a dark India-rubber color, impressed 

 by numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other, but 

 disposed almost transversely. When I first saw 

 the beast it had just left its bath, and a minute drop 

 of a glistening secretion was exuding from each of 

 the conspicuous mucosebaceous pores, which are 

 dispersed over the whole integument, at intervals 

 of from eight lines to an inch. This gave the 



* Satan. 



hide, as it glistened in the sunshine, a very pecu- 

 liar aspect. When the animal was younger the 

 secretion had a reddish color, and being poured out 

 more abundantly, the whole surface brcame paint- 

 ed over with it every time he quitted his bath. 



Nothing can be more correct than this admirable 

 description, with the exception of the alleged 

 nakedness of the skin. The integument, at first 

 sight, does appear naked ; but it is found, as I have 

 stated above, on a close inspection, to be covered 

 with very fine downy hairs, which will, probably, 

 totally or partially vanish as the animal advances 

 in age. 



The gambols and civilities of this denizen of the 

 Nile are not confined to his keepers. I had been 

 told that, when out in the giraffe-paddock, one of 

 the giraffes had bowed down its head to him one 

 day, and that the hippopotamus opened his mouth 

 and took the giraffe's muzzle into the gulf, which 

 seems to be his way of kissing. On Sunday, the 

 9th of June, I saw one of the giraffes do the same 

 thing, with exactly the same result. He had, I 

 have been told, formed an acquaintance with a giraffe 

 which was to have been brought over with him, 

 but was unfortunately drowned. 



Such is the quadruped whose animal magnetism 

 Punch has so forcibly depicted attracting the crowds 

 who are hurrying to its presence. If a mate 

 and this is far from improbable should be sent 

 over to join him in August by the same liberal and 

 friendly potentate to whom we owe the present 

 object of admiration, who shall predict the conse- 

 quence of the double attraction ? 



The third Gordian did not live to see the por- 

 tentous games for which he had caused so vast an 

 assemblage of wild beasts to be brought to Rome. 

 The milliarium s&culum was celebrated by Philip 

 not without suspicion, almost amounting to proof, 

 that the blood of his predecessor was on his head. 

 Philip, in his turn, did not live long after the 

 celebration of that prolonged festival, during which 

 two thousand gladiators at once joined in the death- 

 struggle for the gratification of the people. Defeat- 

 ed by Decius, who had got himsdlf proclaimed 

 emperor in Pannonia, Philip fell under the merci- 

 less hands of his own soldiers near Verona, in the 

 year of Christ 249, before he had completed his 

 forty-fifth year, and before the fifth year of his 

 enjoyment of his bad eminence had run its course. 

 The hippopotamus, which formed a principal feat- 

 ure in those murderous diversions, appears not 

 only on the large brass of Otacilia Severa, but 

 also on one of Philip, (about A. D. 247,) and on 

 another of Hadrian. These, and the well-known 

 plinth of the statue of Nilus, show how familiar 

 this huge form was to Roman eyes. 



I have not heard whether Mr. Wyon has been 

 directed to strike a medal to commemorate this 

 substantial gift of his highness the Viceroy of 

 Egypt, or whether Mr. Gibson has received a 

 commission to immortalize him in marble ; but 

 there can be no doubt that Sir Edwin Landseer 

 must hand down his likeness to posterity. 



