446 



AMPHIBIOUS HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



pieces from the bottom. The Hippopotamus 

 sleeps in the small reedy islets which are found 

 here and there in the rivers it frequents. In 

 such spots it also brings forth its young ; having 

 only one at a birth, which it nurses with great 

 care for a considerable time. The young is ca- 

 pable of being tamed, and we are assured by 

 Belon that he saw one so gentle as to shew no 

 inclination to escape, or to do any kind of mis- 

 chief when let out of the stable in which it was 

 kept. 



These animals are said to be most successfully 

 taken by preparing pitfals for them, of large size, 

 near the rivers. They are also occasionally shot, 

 or killed with harpoons. Their flesh is reckoned 

 good by the Africans, and the fat is said to be a 

 fine kind of lard. But it is chiefly on account of 

 the teeth, and more particularly of the tusks, that 

 this animal is killed ; their hardness being supe- 

 rior to that of ivory, at the same time that they 

 are not so subject to become yellow; for which 

 reason they are much used by the dentists. The 

 skin, from its great thickness and strength, when 

 dried, is used by the African nations for bucklers 

 or shields, and is said to be proof against the 

 stroke of a bullet ; and indeed the living animal, 

 if shot at any where but on the head or the belly, 

 is scarcely vulnerable ; the tough skin causing a 

 bullet to glance from its surface. 



The Hippopotamus was known to the ancient 

 Romans, and we are told by Pliny that Scaurus 

 treated the people, during his a?dileship, with the 



