ON THE BONES OP THE HlPPOPOTAMtJS. 371 



have enumerated, in liis History of Abyssinia, in 1687, but without 

 any notice of the source from which they were derived. 



In 1689, Jean de Thevenot, in his Travels to the Levant, hook ii, 

 of the second part, chap. 71, page 787, gives a rather detailed ac- 

 count of an hippopotamus, which was killed at Girge near Cairo, but 

 unaccompanied by an engraving. 



Notwithstanding the knowledge which might have been derived 

 from these authentic sources, the publication of the work of Prosper 

 Alpin, which as I have already observed, took place in 1375, was 

 the commencement of a series of embarrasments to the subject. 



He headed his twelfth chapter with the title of " The Chceropota- 

 mus and the Hippopotamus," he there commences with giving the 

 figures of two stuiFed skins, the one of a large female, the other of its 

 foetus, which he had seen in the house of the Pacha of Cairo. These 

 are evidently two skins of the hippopotamus of our times : but the 

 head, and consequently the teeth, had been carried off with the rest of 

 the flesh and the bones. 



By the absence of these teeth he was led to conclude, that this 

 could not be the hippopotamus of the Greeks, since, if it were the 

 latter, it must have had its teeth slightly projecting ; and[ having a 

 short time afterwaids observed another skull with teeth at Alexandria, 

 he published a drawing of this also (the same which Aldrovandus had 

 published before him), declaring at the same time, that the latter alone 

 belonged to the true hippopotauius, as it corresponded more accurately 

 with the descriptions given by the Greeks. 



For the same reason, he concluded that the figures on the plinth of 

 the statue of the Nile, and those of the medals of Adrian, do not re- 

 present the hippopotamus, but that imaginary animal whose skin he 

 had seen without the teeth. 



It was difl^cult to avoid this error of the antients, that the teeth pro- 

 jected from the mouth, when there was no opportunity of seeing the 

 living animal. These teeth, and more particularly the canine, are so 

 large, that it is difficult to conceive how they can be contained be- 

 neath the lips ; now the ancients had seen many of these teeth ; and 

 even previous to their having any idea of the figure of the animal to 

 which they belonged, and when they supposed it to be equal to that 

 of an ass, they made then an article of traffic, and used them as ivory 

 in the most precious works of art. 



Pausanius speaks of the statue of a goddess, the face of which was 

 formed of those teeth (Pausan Arcad. p. 530), and Cosmas in the time 

 of the Emperor Justin, mentions his having brought home and sold 

 one weighing thirteen pounds, while the largest that we have do not 

 weigh more than six. 



This is, doubtless, the reason why the ancients supposed that the 

 teeth of the hippopotamus projected from its mouth like those of the 

 wild boar. Nevertheless, it is an unvarying fact that the hippopotamus 

 does not expose its teeth in the slightest degree when its muzzle is 

 closed : this is attested by many eye-witnesses, and those heads which 

 have preserved their skin, without its becoming contracted by drying, 

 prove it still more decidedly : we have one of these in the Museum. 

 The ancient figures there, of which I have spoken, give us a faithful 



