372 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



representation of this animal, and it is useless to suppose the existence 

 of another species in order to explain them. 



This was done by Prosper Alpin. To this ima<Tlnary species he 

 gave the name of river-hog, called as he tells us, Chceropotamus, by 

 the Greeks. 



Now none of the ancient Greek writers, at least that I have been 

 able to discover, ever employed this word Chceropotamus to designate 

 a definite animal. The Mosaic of Palostrinum, which, by the by, 

 Prosper Alpin had never seen, exhibits a quadruped with some 

 scarcely decypherable letters, among which people have fancied they 

 could discern xp^poit. But as the ancients had a chceropotamus or 

 monkey pig, which probably might have been the mandrill, or some 

 cynociphalus , and as the figure in question bears some distant re- 

 semblance to the latter, we can draw no conclusion from thence, in 

 favour of the existence of a chceropotamus. 



Nevertheless, Hermann, in his Table of the Affinities of Quadrupeds, 

 (John Hermann's Tabula Affinitatum Animalium, page 96), admits its 

 existence as if it had been demonstrated ; nay, he goes so far as to say, 

 that Prosper has very clearly pointed out the difference between the 

 chceropotamus and hippopotamus ; disertis verbis distinguit is his 

 expression. Thus it is that the cleverest men are led to adopt errors 

 when the latter are favourable to their general system. Hermann was 

 attempting to prove that all animals bore a certain affinity to each 

 other, and were but as links in the great chain of animated beings ; 

 he found the several species of the order of pachydermata too isolated 

 to justify his idea : hence, he was under the necessity of trying to per- 

 suade himself that there were still many unknown species of that class; 

 and whatever could lead him to suppose the existence of any one of 

 these, was eagerly embraced by him. Perhaps it may be said, that 

 the object of my present researches gives me an interest precisely 

 contrary, and that I may feel, perpetually tempted to eflface the 

 traces which might lead to the discovery of unknown living species, in 

 order to render the number of the lost more considerable. I felt con- 

 scious at the outset, that I was incurring this risk, and I shall be ever 

 on the watch to avoid it ; even at this present moment I am far from 

 denying the existence of species similar to those I have just men- 

 tioned; all that I mean to say is, that we are without any proof of it. 



It has never been sufficiently explained how the two hippopotami of 

 Zerenghi, and the first of those of Prosper Alpin, had strayed so close 

 to Damietta, and that of Thevenot to Cairo; nor whence came the se- 

 cond, which Prosper Alpin saw at Alexandria ; but it is certain that at 

 present not one of these animals is to be seen below the cataracts. 

 All the travellers who have visited Egypt during the eighteenth cen- 

 tury are unanimous upon this subject, and the naturalists attached to 

 our expedition to Egypt, who ascended the Nile as far as Sienna, did 

 not meet with a single one. It is only in Abyssinia, and in the regions 

 of Afi-ica to the south of the Atlas, and particularly of the Senegal 

 and the Cape, that the hippopotamus has been observed in latter 

 times. 



It was from the Senegal that the fcetus described by Daubenton 

 was brought, as well as the young hippopotamus of the Museum of 



