86 ANIMAL FOOD EESOUECES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



merits. Gumming says the flesh is excellent eating, 

 and Baker appears to agree with him, while Dr. Living- 

 stone speaks o£ it as being pretty good food when one is 

 hungry and cannot get anything better, but that it 

 is a coarse-grained meat, having a flavour something 

 between pork and beef. 



The flesh of the hippopotamus is well esteemed, and 

 the meat, according to Du Ohaillu, does not taste unlike 

 beef. He considers it rather coarse-grained, and not 

 fat, but a welcome and wholesome dish. 



A fine young specimen which was exhibited in the 

 Crystal Palace was roasted alive when the eastern wing 

 of that palace was burned, in December, 1866. The 

 hippopotamus was a black, leathery- looking, charred 

 mass. Upon being more closely examined, it did not 

 at all appear so distasteful a morsel as at a first glance. 

 True, the skin was leathery and charred, but it had 

 split in places, like cracknel, exposing a beautifully- 

 delicate white meat or fat underneath. Dr. Crisp se- 

 cured it, and he has given an account of his dissection 

 of it in the " Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 

 1867," p. 601. 



He there tells us that one side of the animal was well 

 roasted, and that he supplied some of his friends with 

 the meat thus cooked — gipsy fashion — and partook of 

 it several times himself. ,He reports the flavour as ex- 

 cellent, and the colour of the flesh whiter than that of 

 any veal he ever saw. The fat lay under the skin as in 

 the hog, and not in the interior as in the elephant ; it 

 was about 1^ inches in thickness. 



In South Africa hippopotamus meat is in request both 

 among natives and colonists, and the epicures of Cape 

 Town do not disdain to use their influence with the 

 country farmers to obtain a preference in the matter of 

 "sea cow's speck," (as the fat which lies immediately 

 under the skin is called,) when salted and dried. 



Dr. Schweinfurth says he always found hippopotamus 

 bacon unfit for eating, and when cut into naairow strips 

 and roasted it was as hard and tough as so much rope. 



