HIPPOPOTAMUS. 
359 - 
animal. His eyes and nostrils are disproportion- 
ately small. His ears are small, pointed, and 
covered within with a thick lining of short, fine 
hairs. A few slender tufts of hair are scattered 
over the lips. The body is thinly covered with 
hair, at first sight scarcely discernible. It appears 
mouse-coloured at coming out of the water, but 
when dry of an obscure brown. On the neck, 
the hair is thicker than on the rest of the body, 
hut not so thick as to form a mane. The tail is 
almost bare, and about a foot in length. The 
legs are short and thick ; the hoofs divided into 
four separate parts. Though an amphibious ani- 
mal, the hippopotamus has no membranes connect- 
ing the divisions of the hoofs. 
Africa seems to be the only division of the 
globe inhabited by this species. The Nile, the 
Niger, the Gambia, the Zaira, are the chief rivers 
in which they have been discovered. But they are 
observed through all the other considerable-rivers, 
and the lakes of the African continent. From the 
information of the Jesuits,, and of Bruce, a later 
and more accurate observer, we learn that they 
abound in all the lakes and rivers of Abyssinia, 
- Nubia, and Upper Egypt. Cultivation has ex* 
pelled them from Lower Egypt. Sparrman repre- 
sents them as not less numerous in the southern 
parts of Africa. It had been imagined, that 
hippopotami never ventured into the ocean, and 
scarce ever descended so low as to the mouths of 
rivers ; but this philosophical traveller relates, 
that he actually observed several hippopotami its 
salt water, at the mouths of the rivers Krotnme 
and Camtour ; and in the district of Krakekama, 
saw on the sea-beach, evident traces of one of these 
animals that had come out of sea, but instantly 
retired back : he was -also informed by a captain 
Burtz, that on the eastern coast of Africa he had 
