HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



751 



give so much annoyance to many mammalia, as if 

 they were in the free air, though, like the other 

 pachydermata, they wallow in the mud. These con- 

 siderations -may help us in forming a guess at what 

 may have been the condition of the globe when hip- 

 popotami were much more numerous than they are 

 now ; for though there are adaptations to climate in 

 the external covering which have nothing to do with 

 the internal anatomy of animals, yet when we find a 

 skeleton of a definite type, and know the living ani- 

 mal to which it answers, we can always make pretty 

 sure of the food and manner of feeding of the species 

 of which we actually know only the bones. 

 ^ The hippopotamus is found in the rivers of 

 Western Africa, and also in the larger ones near the 

 Cape, -but it has been rarely seen in the former of 

 these localities, though much more frequently in the 

 latter. It is not found near the sea in any place so 

 much as in the interior, and those places which have 

 strong vegetation, and where the banks are liable to 

 seasonal overflow by the water. These are the 

 places in which its peculiar services are most wanted, 

 because they are the places where the water-courses 

 are most liable to be choked up by vegetable remains. 

 Those places which are the favourite haunts of the 

 hippopotamus are also the favourite haunts of the 

 crocodile ; and on the banks of the Upper Nile, while 

 the one tramples down and eats the crops, the other 

 often carries off the people. Lord Prudhoe, who travel- 

 led in Sennaar in 1829, mentions numerous instances 

 of depredations by these formidable reptiles. He did 

 not see any one carried off, but places were pointed 

 out at which such things had occurred only a few 

 days before. In one of those instances a crocodile 

 snatched up a man who was washing clothes on the 

 bank of the river, and instantlym ade for the opposite 

 side with its prey ; but, in the passage, another croco- 

 dile saw the prize, and followed the first, when a fierce 

 battle ensued between them. Though crocodiles 

 usually feed on the land, they fight better in the 

 water, and so they plunged into the river to finish their 

 combat in due form. In the meantime, the dead body 

 of the man drowned, not bitten, to death, which is 

 the habit of crocodiles was removed and buried, so 

 that the reptiles had only their fight for their pains. 



But though the crocodiles are thus formidable to 

 man on the great rivers of the interior of Africa, it 

 does not appear that they ofl'er the least annoyance 

 to the hippopotamus. That animal is truly the 

 monarch of the wild flood. Neither lion, nor any 

 other carnivorous beast, attacks it. This is not on 

 account of the thickness of the skin ; for, though the 

 skin is about half an inch in thick-ness, and stiff, it is 

 not hard, or destitute of sense of pain. 



The skins of the Pachydermata are almost all very 

 sensitive to the attacks of insects ; but for even a lion 

 to spring upon a hippopotamus would be rather a 

 perilous matter, as the animal would instantly plunge, 

 dive, and drown the Hon. On the other hand, the 

 crocodile could not make much of the hippopotamus. 

 In the first place, no crocodile could carry off so large 

 an animal ; and, in the second place, the mouth and 

 bite of the hippopotamus are by far the most formi- 

 dable of the two ; and though, in its natural habits, 

 the hippopotamus bites only vegetable 'substances, 

 yet it would of course bite an animal in self-defence ; 

 and, from the size, the form, and the hardness of the 

 teeth, and the great force with which they can be 

 made to act, there is little doubt that its bite would 



be more formidable than even that of a lion. Its 

 mouth is not, to be sure, a killing one, but, if applied 

 to an animal, it would mangle dreadfully. Thus, 

 while this savage and powerful, though dull and 

 sluggish animal, lives at comparative peace, on its 

 own part, with the whole of animated nature, it is 

 perfectly indifferent to all that are around it. 



Still these animals are not without their battles ; 

 for it seems to be a very general law of nature, and, for 

 aught we know, it may have its physiological use in 

 keeping up their energy, that, in all'the more power- 

 ful animals which are vegetable feeders, the males 

 fight desperate battles of gallantry. Horses, bulls, 

 rams, and many others, are terrible in their amatory 

 wars, while even the most savage of the carnivora 

 rarely fight upon this account. The same holds good 

 in the case of birds ; and we believe that the pugna- 

 cious beetles, which are engaged with each other as 

 a gambling sport in some parts of the east, are vege- 

 table feeders. We are sometimes apt to attribute 

 these excitements wholly to the heat of the sun and 

 the season ; but the fact of such battles taking place 

 among the hippopotami, which are constantly bathing 

 in the cold flood, shows that there is something in 

 the nature of the animal, and that the propensity is 

 stronger in proportion as the animal is more vegetable 

 in its feeding. 



When lying on the bank of a river, the hippopo- 

 tamus seems a vast and shapeless lump, and one 

 would hardly take it to be an animal. The eyes are 

 small, even if open ; the ears are also small ; and 

 though the legs and tail are very stout, they are short. 

 There is also a want of muscular marking on the 

 body, for, if the animal is at all in good condition, 

 there is always a thick layer of fat over it. This fat 

 in the recent state, and when the animal is obtained 

 from the water, is of some consistency ; but it con- 

 tains less stearine than even the fat of the hog, and 

 thus soon passes into oil, and becomes rancid from 

 the putrefaction of the cellular substance with which 

 it is mixed, when it is exposed to the warm air, and 

 especially to the direct action of the sun. The Dutch 

 inhabitants of Southern Africa, who call the hippo- 

 potamus the zee-coe, or " sea cow " (though it is 

 never found in the sea), are very fond of this fat, 

 which they call spek, the name given to the fat of the 

 whale, and also to that of the hog ; and when they 

 succeed in killing the animal, they preserve this fat 

 by salting it, usually allowing all the fat which they 

 cannot remove to drain from the muscles as oil, and 

 drying these in the sun, as a harsh, but not unwhole- 

 some food. The greater number of the Pachyder- 

 mata have a tendency to accumulate soft fat or lard 

 under the skin, and this tendency is always the 

 greater in proportion as the animals are more aquatic 

 in their habits. In this respect the hippopotamus 

 exceeds all the rest, making the nearest approach to 

 the Cetacea of any footed animal, arid hence we find 

 in it the greatest tendency to the accumulation of this 

 kind of fat. There is no doubt that it answers the 

 same purpose in all these animals. An aquatic habit, 

 or even a habit of wallowing much in the mire and 

 sludge of rivers, is inconsistent with the possession of 

 a thick furry coat, by which the animals could be 

 protected from changes of temperature ; and the 

 substitute for this is the coat of fat under the skin, fat 

 being, like fur, a bad conductor of heat. The transi- 

 tion from the water to the air, on the part of the hip- 

 popotamus, is almost as great a change in tempera- 



