4 IS THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



plantations, it is condemned to retreat before tlie waves of 

 ad\ancing civilisation, and would long since have been extir- 

 pated in all Africa, if the lakes and rivers of the interior of 

 that vast den of barbarism were as busily ploughed over as ours 

 by boats and ships, or their banks as thickly strewn wath towns 

 and villages. 



For the hippopotamus is not able, like so many other beasts 

 of the wilderness, to hide itself in the gloom of impenetrable 

 forests, or to plunge into the sandy desert ; it requires the 

 neiglibourhood of the stream, the empire of which it divides 

 with its amphibious neighbour the crocodile. Occasionally 

 (luring the day it is to be seen basking on the shore amid ooze 

 and mud, but throughout the night the unwieldy monster may 

 be lieard snorting and blowing during its aquatic gambols ; it 

 then sallies forth from its i-eed-grown coverts to graze by the 

 light of the moon, never, however, venturing to any distance 

 from tlie river, the stronghold to which it retreats on the 

 smallest alarm. It feeds on grass alone, and where there is any 

 danger only at night. Its enormous lips act like a mowing 

 machine, and form a path of short cropped grass as it goes on 

 eating. 



In point of ugliness the hippopotamus might compete with 

 the rliinoceros itself. Its shapeless carcase rests upon short 

 and disproportioned legs, and, wuth its vast belly almost 

 trailing upon the ground, it may not inaptly be likened to an 

 overgrown ' prize-pig.' Its immensely large head has each jaw 

 armed with two formidable tusks, those in the lower, which 

 are always the largest, attaining at times two feet in length ; 

 and the inside of the mouth resembles a mass of butcher's 

 meat. The eyes, which are placed in prominences like the 

 garret windows of a Dutch house, the nostrils, and ears, are all 

 (iu the same plane, on the upper level of the head, so that the 

 unwieldy monster, w^hen immersed in its favourite element, is 

 able to draw breath, and to use three senses at once for hours 

 tooether, without exposing more than its snout. The hide, 

 wliich is upwards of an inch and a half in thickness, and of a 

 pinkisli-brown colour, clouded and freckled with a darker tint, 

 is destitute of covering, excepting a few scattered hairs on the 

 muzzle, the edges of the ears and tail. Though generally mild 

 and inoffensive, it is not to be wondered at that a creature like 



