134 
ALMOST HUMAN 
HIPPOPOTAMUSES 
WILLIAM AND ROSAMOND, OTHERWISE MR. AND MRS. HIPPO. 
Two of the most interesting animals in the whole gardens are 
William and Rosamond, the great hippopotamuses who have reduced 
laziness to a perfect science. These two amphibious creatures cause 
endless amusement for visitors, and they deserve much better treatment 
than they usually get from, thoughtless people. They are as gentle as 
they are big, and it is feared that their confiding trustfulness will yet 
bring them serious mischief. They throw open their cavernous mouths 
in expectation of food, and they will contentedly grind to powder with 
their great tusks anything from a peanut to a luscious apple or banana. 
But some people have such perverted ideas of fun that they will fill bags 
with sand and glass, and throw these dangerous articles into their 
mouths. It has only been by the best of good fortune that the two have 
been saved from the consequences of such senseless joking, and when 
it is remembered that the pair cost £1,000, this joking might have proved 
m.ost costly. Another cruel trick is to throw empty bottles at them as 
they wallow in their pond. Rosamond’s eye missed fragments of flying 
glass by an inch one Sunday as she rose to the surface at the same 
moment as a bottle was shivered on the concrete pavement of her pond. 
Ordinary people cannot see any fun in blood streaming from a cut, 
caused by such inhuman doings, on the head of an inoffensive animal. 
Hippos are captured when very young in the rivers of Central 
Africa. Hunters watch their haunts carefully until they see a mother 
swimming down stream with a cub on her back. They shoot the 
mother dead, and then catch her baby and carry it off into captivity. 
The ponderous animals are most wonderful swimmers, and it requires 
no small skill to hit one, for they dive on the first hint of danger and 
the next appearance will be perhaps two or three miles lower down 
the river. They seem to have the power of closing themselves up like 
submarines, and can exist under water for an amazing time. When 
they rise to the surface they can merely show an inch or two of their 
flat mouths and blow off the spent air, inhale a fresh supply, and then 
vanish as the Cheshire cat or like the unfortunate person glanced at by 
the Boojum. But if they are disposed to come up out of the water 
they will rise like submarines,, showing the whole of the back of head 
