HIPPOPOTAMUS. 7 



Probably all the caves in which hippopotamine remains have been found were 

 hysena-dens, and it is a noteworthy fact that in almost every case the remains are 

 chiefly those of calves or young adults. As Buckland, and after him Boyd 

 Dawkins pointed out, it appears that it was only the young' and inexperienced 

 individuals that the hyaenas were able to overcome and drag into their dens. 



Boule 1 gives a map showing the distribution of the hippopotamus in Quaternary 

 times. The area of distribution includes the south and east of England, 

 practically the whole of France and Belgium, the Iberian Peninsula. Italy and 

 Sicily, a small part of western Germany, North Africa, Syria and Cyprus. The 

 author points out that a skeleton from Tiflis was found too late for this locality to 

 be included in the map. The boundary in Britain is not drawn sufficiently far 

 west to include the occurrences in the caves of North and South Wales. 



By far the finest series of British hippopotamine remains is that from 

 Barrington near Cambridge. The great majority of these are preserved in the 

 Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge, others in the University Museum of Zoology and 

 the British Museum. Next in importance is the series from Leeds preserved in 

 the Leeds Philosophical Society's Museum. The British Museum contains a 

 large series of bones from many localities, and there are others in the Museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons and in the Bristol and Manchester Museums, and 

 in the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, London. 



The distribution of the hippopotamus in Pleistocene times, and in particular its 

 range as far north as York and its reported association with boreal animals like 

 the mammoth, reindeer, and woolly rhinoceros, is a subject of much interest, and 

 one to which many writers, including Lyell, Brest wich, Boyd Dawkins, J. (leikie 

 and Boule have paid attention. There may be said to be three theories by which 

 it has been sought to explain the facts. 



(1) That of Structural Mollification. — Brestwiclr suggested that the palaeolithic 

 hippopotamus may have been protected by a hairy coat like Rhinoceros tichorhinns 

 and the mammoth. As James (leikie points out, the hippopotamus is not the 

 only animal concerned, as the contemporary Elephas antiqnus and Rhinoceros 

 megarhinus and //. leptorhinus would require similar protection, and it is hardly 

 possible to believe that they were all provided with hairy coats. 



(2) That of Seasonal Migration. — This theory has been most clearly expounded 

 by Boyd Dawkins. 3 It is suggested that during a period of greatly contrasted 

 seasons, Avhen the climate was similar to that prevailing in some parts of Siberia 

 and Canada at the present time, the southern forms like hippopotamus migrated 

 northwards in the summer, while the northern forms like the mammoth migrated 



1 ' Les Grottes de Grrimaldi,' iii, fasc. 3, p. 194. 



2 'Phil. Trans.,' cliv (1864), p. 285. 



:5 ' Pop. Science Review,' v (1871), p. 388. 



