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HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



itself not at home there ; for upon the least noise 

 being made, or alarm given, it takes to the water, 

 plunges to the bottom, and only raises the nose above 

 the surface occasionally for the purpose of breathing, 

 When it plunges into the water, it makes a great 

 splash, and the flood covers its descent with foam and 

 rippling. It also can expire the air which it has in 

 its lungs when under the water ; and this causes that 

 bubbling of the water to which allusion is made in the 

 account of Behemoth in the Book of Job, which, no 

 doubt, alludes to the hippopotamus, as the Leviathan 

 is, in all probability, the crocodile of the Nile. The 

 best authorities (for it is a question of authorities) 

 ascribe the Book of Job to Moses ; and from his edu- 

 cation in Egypt, the crocodile and the hippopotamus 

 must have been the aquatic animals with which he 

 was best acquainted. Behemoth appears to have had, 

 among the Hebrews, the same meaning as " brute " 

 has with us ; that is, a heavy animal feeding upon 

 vegetable matter j and " behemoth" is usually trans- 

 lated " cattle," in distinction to the more general 

 word " beast," although the use of that as a general 

 term is improper. " Behemoth on a thousand hills," is 

 the expression which, in the common version of the 

 Bible, is rendered " the cattle on a thousand hills." 

 Now there is no inhabitant of the waters to which such 

 an epithet can be properly applied, but the hippopota- 

 mus ; and it is remarkable with what truth the charac- 

 ters of the animal are marked by the inspired writer. 

 It is probable that, in the days of Moses, these ani- 

 mals abounded in the Nile throughout Egypt ; for 

 mention is made of them in the streams of the Delta 

 at a more recent period of history. Now, however, 

 they are not found in Lower Egypt, nor in any part 

 of the Nile below the cataracts. They do occur in 

 the upper parts of the river, though probably not in 

 such numbers as they did in former times. Burkhardt 

 says, " The hippopotamus is very common in Don- 

 gola. It is a fearful plague there on account of its 

 voracity, and the want of means in the inhabitants to 

 destroy it. It often descends the Nile as far as 

 Sukkat. -In 1812, several of them passed the Bahr el 

 Hudjar, and made their appearance at Wadi Haifa 

 and Dan ; an occurrence unknown to the oldest inha- 

 bitants. One was killed by an Arab by a shot over 

 the eye. The country people ate the flesh, and the 

 skin and teeth were sold to a merchant of Sioutt. 

 Another continued its career northward, and was seen 

 beyond the cataract of Assauan at Deran, one day's 

 march north of that place." Their descents to the 

 north are, however, of rare occurrence ; and the hip- 

 popotamus must now be considered as an animal of 

 the central and southern parts of Africa only. 



Above the cataracts of the Nile, where the country 

 becomes broader and more fertile, these animals are 

 much more abundant. In Senaar they inhabit both 

 branches of the river, and in their nightly excursions 

 on shore they are very destructive to the crops, not 

 only eating great quantities, but trampling down the 

 rest with their large and clumsy feet. 



They are long animals, not less than ten or eleven 

 feet from the nose to the tail ; but they do not stand 

 higher than between four and five feet. Their steps, 

 also, are very short, so that they make an absolute 

 rut in passing over sofit ground. The quantity which 

 they eat is enormous, much greater than that eaten 

 by any other known animals. The stomach can con- 

 tain five or six bushels, and the large intestine is at 

 'east eight inches in diameter. It is not without 



reason, therefore, that the people dread their visits. 

 It is true that their digestive powers are not great, 

 or rather, perhaps, that thoir ordinary food contains 

 but little matter fit for their nourishment. Their 

 mouths are adapted for tearing and dividing hard and 

 tough plants, but not for grinding any substance to a 

 pulp, as is done by ruminating animals. Half their 

 cheek teeth are, as we have said, conical and pointed, 

 so as not to be in any way grinding teeth, and the 

 remaining ones are also but ill fitted for such a pur- 

 pose. Besides, though they have a compressing 

 motion of the jaws which is very powerful, they have 

 no lateral or grinding motion, and all that their mouth 

 can do to the food is to bruise it a little. Thus the 

 stomach does not dissolve any of the ligneous or 

 harder part of the food, but merely extracts a portion 

 of the juice, so that the great mass of the food passes 

 off in a state comparatively little changed. As com- 

 pared with most other animals, there is but a small 

 portion of what is taken into the mouth that goes to 

 the nourishment of the body ; and thus the animals 

 may be said to be always burdened with the refuse 

 of what they swallow. Most of the pachydermata 

 have the functions of digestion less perfect than those 

 of other herbivorous animals ; and if it is of very hard 

 consistency, they only draw a tincture from it. This 

 is the case with the horse, which, although like the 

 hippopotamus, wholly a vegetable feeder, differs the 

 most from it in many respects of any animal in the 

 class. The hog, which is more omnivorous, does the 

 same, at least when it does not get food which is 

 succulent, and then it fattens more than any other 

 animal. In England, where horses are much fed 

 upon dry food, there still remains so much substance 

 in it, that the grains which they drop on the roads 

 serve for food to a vast number of birds. 



As the hippopotamus appears to feed upon more 

 coarse and rough substances than any of the order, 

 not excepting the elephant and the rhinoceros, neither 

 of which has the teeth at all fitted for tearing sub- 

 stances of the same toughness. The very peculiar 

 teeth of the elephant, if we except the tusks, which 

 do not in any way act in the taking or preparing of 

 the food ; the teeth are all grinders, or rather bruisers ; 

 and although the rhinoceros has two cutting teeth of 

 considerable size and strength in each jaw, yet the 

 majority are bruising teeth. Neither of those ani- 

 mals could therefore subsist on the same kind of food 

 as the hippopotamus ; and not taking their food into 

 the stomach in so rude a state, or of a nature contain- 

 ing so little nutriment, they do not require it in such 

 vast quantities in proportion to their bulk. 



This very peculiar mode of feeding iits the hippo- 

 potamus for the very rudest life of all the mammalia. 

 Its office is to clear the rivers of those vegetable 

 remains which, if allowed to accumulate in countries 

 where vegetation is rapid, and the rains fall heavily 

 in their seasons, would choke up all the passages, and 

 turn all the flat lands into at least periodical marshes ; 

 and in order to fit them for this very laborious service, 

 they are exempted from some of those labours to 

 which other animals are subjected. When in the 

 water they are supported on all sides by the pressure 

 of that fluid, so that the weight remaining to press on 

 the feet is small, as compared with that of the whale ; 

 and there is also much less waste of the body of an 

 animal that keeps the water, than of one exposed to 

 the air. Besides, they are not so much infested by 

 those insects which are near the water, and which 



