57° 



The Museum Gazette 



STRUCTURAL ADAPTATIONS. 



In our frontispiece, exhibiting the bones of the head of the 

 Hippopotamus, there is amongst many features of interest one 

 which should at once attract notice. The eye-sockets are not 

 placed on the sides or front of its face as in most other animals, 

 but high up on its skull. In this formation it has parallels in 

 the crocodile and the bull-frog. The graphic illustration now 

 given enables us at a glance to appreciate the advantages 



which the animal secures from this position of its orbits. It 

 can swim with the whole of its immense and heavy carcase 

 under water, and with but few parts exposed excepting its 

 nostrils, its eyes and its ears. Not only does it thus 

 acquire buoyancy in the act of swimming, but it is enabled 

 to conceal itself when at rest. One of its favourite positions 

 is indeed that of basking in water just deep enough to well 



