488 UNGULATA. 



into the water, but, except where they have learned to dread man, they 

 are careless and sluggish in their movements. The day thus passes in 

 alternate dozing and waking, but at night the herd becomes livelier. 

 The grunting of the males rises to a roar, and all the troop begin to 

 sport in the stream ; they regularly follow boats on a night voyage, and 

 cause with their snorting and grunting, their bellowing and splashing, 

 an endless tumult. They swim with remarkable activity, rising, sinking, 

 wheeling or advancing with consummate skill, and when progressing 

 peacefully, scarcely disturb the water. When angered, however, they 

 spring forward with a violence that sets the water in a turmoil, and 

 sometimes destroy or upset boats. When disturbed while they are 

 sleeping or basking on the bank, they show that they are more active 

 than they seem ; they will plunge from a height of six yards and send 

 behind them a wake like a small steamboat. 



When feeding, on landing, the Hippopotamus is not only destructive 

 to the fields of the husbandman, but dangerous to man and beast. With 

 blind fury it attacks everything which comes in its way, and those who 

 describe it as a peaceable, good-natured animal, can never have seen it 

 in anger. Even when in the water the monster is not to be trusted 

 implicitly. Lieutenant Vidal, in sailing up the Tembi River, in south- 

 western Africa, suddenly felt his boat raised up and the steersman flung 

 overboard. The next instant a giant hippopotamus appeared, and rushed 

 with open jaws at the boat ; it seized it with its terrible teeth and tore 

 out seven of the planks. The boat had probably grazed the monster's 

 back with its keel. On land the River-horse is still more dangerous. 

 Here they cannot be relied on to take flight; they rush on like a. savage 

 boar and seize the object of their fury, tearing it with their teeth and 

 trampling it down with their feet. A single bite has been known to kill 

 a man. A female with her young one is most to be dreaded, for every 

 object seems to provoke her fury. She never leaves the little one for a 

 moment, and watches every movement ; at times she plays awkwardly 

 with her calf; at times she carries it on her back. The young sit astride 

 of her short neck, and the mother seems to rise to the surface more often 

 than she herself requires in order to let her offspring breathe. It is not 

 advisable to approach a female when thus engaged. One whose calf had 

 been speared on the previous day made at the boat in which Dr. Living- 

 stone was sitting, and drove her head against it with such force that she 

 lifted the bows completely out of the water. 



