268 MOSTLY MAMMALS 
northwards to the cataracts of the Nile, and it extends 
westwards to Senegal; but while for several centuries it 
has been very seldom met with on the Nile below the 
entrance of the Atbara and Blue Nile, there is abundant 
evidence that in the time of the Pharaohs it was common 
in Egypt, where in the temple of Edfu, as well as several 
other buildings, there are frescoes representing the mode in 
which it was hunted and speared. That the hippopotamus 
is the animal indicated in the Book of Job under the name 
of behemoth is, according to Canon Tristram, undoubted, 
but there is no evidence that the Jews were acquainted 
with it otherwise than during their sojourn in Egypt. It 
is true, indeed, that the writer just mentioned suggests 
that its range may have extended eastwards as far as 
Palestine, but this is mere conjecture, and had the creature 
ever lived there the expeditions which have from time to 
time explored that country ought to have found some of 
its remains. In the Pleistocene and upper Pliocene deposits 
of Southern and Central Europe there occur, however, 
numerous remains of a hippopotamus which cannot be speci- 
fically distinguished from the existing African form, although 
it is generally of rather larger size. The difference in size 
was at one time thought to indicate that the fossil form 
was a distinct species, but the discovery many years ago 
of a half-fossilised jaw in the alluvium of the Nile near 
Kalabshi, in Nubia, showed that in former times the 
African hippopotamus attained dimensions as large as the 
European form. In England the hippopotamus ranged at 
least as far north as Leeds, and it is a remarkable circum- 
stance that in many places its remains have been found 
in association with those of the reindeer. How animals 
now inhabiting countries with such totally different climatic 
conditions as tropical Africa and Lapland could have lived 
