I 



AND LOWER EGYPT. 177 



in that quarter ; they were of course the crableoj 

 of mischance and of cruelty. 



Among superstitious nations, terror also has its 

 deities, and it is to this painful idea alone that we 

 are to ascribe the particular worship with which 

 these clumsy and dangerous quadrupeds were ho- 

 noured at Paprem'is, solely in the view of appeasing 

 or averting their rage. But the hippopotamus, as 

 the author of Philosophical Researches respecting 

 the Egyptians and the Chinese, has justly observed, 

 far from approaching, in the present day, as high 

 as Old Cairo, does not even descend below the ca- 

 taracts of the Nile : after becoming very scarce in 

 Egypt, he has finally disappeared altogether. 



It is well known that very few of the race of the 

 hippopotamus have been found in this country 

 during the last two centuries ; and the aeras in 

 which they were seen have been marked. About 

 the year 1550, Bellonius saw one of those animals 

 at Constantinople, whither it had been brought 

 from Egypt *, supposing however that it really was 

 an hippopotamus, which the traveller examined, in 

 the capital of the Turkish empire ; which Mathi- 

 olus, supported by some errors in the description, 



* Petr, BcUoiiii de Aquadl. Parisiis, i^SS, page 14, and 

 Observ. folio 103, verso. 



VOL. III. H disputes 



