NOTE -BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 61 



malviDg a noise mucli like a hog that is going to be 

 killed, but more slirill and harsh. It struggled hard, 

 and was very unmanageable ; and, though the Hot- 

 tentots were of opinion that it was not more than a 

 fortnight, or at most three weeks old, it was three feet 

 and a half in length, and two feet high. When it was 

 let loose it ceased crying ; and after the Hottentots had 

 passed their hands several times over its nose, in order 

 to accustom it to their effluvia, it directly began to 

 take to them ; and in its hunger, poor thing, devoured 

 the droppings of the oxen. While it was alive, Sparr- 

 man made a drawing of it, from which the plate in 

 Tlie Stvedish Transactions for 1778, and that in his 

 own Voyage, was taken ; and then the hapless orphan 

 was killed, dissected and eaten, in less than three hours. 

 Sparrman found four stomachs — the first nearly empty, 

 containing only a few lumps of cheese or curd ; ix\ the 

 second were several clots of caseous matter, and a great 

 quantity of sand and mud ; the third contained lumps 

 of caseous matter of a yellow colour, and harder con- 

 sistence than the others, together with several leaves, 

 quite whole and fresh, and some dirt ; in the fourth was 

 a good deal of dirt, with a small quantity of curds, 

 which were whiter than those in any of the other 

 stomachs. The intestinal canal was 109 feet long. 



This, be it remembered, was a baby. What a sujDply 

 must be requisite for the full-grown animal ! 



Bitterly does the husbandman, whose cultivated fields 

 lie in the neighbourhood of a hippopotamus-haunted 

 river, rue its voracity, and describe it, unconsciously, in 

 terms long ago recorded by Nicander* and Diodorus,-f- 



* "H iTTTVov Tov NeiXoff vwep 2otV aWaXotcrcrav 



BoaKd, dpovprjaiu Se KaKf]v eVt/iJciXAerat upTrrjv. — Theriac. 



t Diodorus says, that if the fecundity of the beast were greater, 

 it would be ruinous to the agriculture of Eg}pt ; and Sonnini 



