CHAPTER XII. 
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 
Hebold now Gehemoth, which 1 made with thee; he eateth grass ag an ox, 
Lo how, his strength is in his los, and his force is in the navel of hig belly. 
His bowes are as strong pieces vf brass, His ribs are like bars of iron, 
Surely the moutitains bring him forth food, where all the beaata of the field play. 
He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed and fens, 
The slindy teees cover him with their shadow, the willows of the brook compass iin about. 
MopERN commentators are nearly all agreed in identifying Behemoth of the Sacred writings with the Hippopotamus —as 
Well as in pronouncing the scaly Crocodile, to be Leviathan, created “hugest of beasts that swim the ocean stream.” Alike 
amphibious, and inhabiting the same waters, these aquatic monsters were uniformly associated together by the ancients, who 
were wont to describe them both as heing possessed of the most marvellous powers: and when the changes are considered 
which time and civilization have wrought in the relative position of man and the wild beasts, the poetical descriptions given 
im the Book of Job will be found throughout so characteristic of the habits of each, as to leave little doubt upon the mind 
" that these must have been the animals implied; for in arriving at our conclusions upon a subject so remote, it should be 
borne in mind that creatures which im the earlier history of our own species, were “words of fear,” have gradually been 
rendered more timid, and less formidable, in the ratio of the encroachments of man upon their wild haunts, armed with more 
efficient weapons for their destruction. But of all the mammalia, whose portraits, drawn from exaggerated descriptions or mu- 
tilated specimens, have been foisted upon the world, poor Behemoth has doubtless been the most shamefully traduced, and the 
inost ludicrously misrepresented. Although celebrated from the most remote antiquity, engraven both on Egyptian obelisks and 
ou Roman medals, sacrificed in combats of the Arena, and exhibited with other rare and singular animals in triumphal proces- 
sions, his history was nevertheless so imperfectly understood by the ancients, that both Aristotle and Herodotus awarded him the 
yoice and mane of a horse, the hoofs of an ox, and the tail and tusks of a wild boar, —the whole tastefully combined with 
the fair proportions of an ass! Pliny did not fail to add handsomely to this catalogue of blunders; and yet, according to his 
awn account, the citizens of Rome were treated by Scaurus during his edileship, to the sight of a live Hippopotamus, which, 
together with four Crocodiles, was exhibited in a temporary lake prepared for the occasion— 
And a deformed sort of monsters came 
Which by their shape we might Sea-horses name: 
Augustus next producing one of the prodigies as an appropriate emblem of conquered Egypt, on his triumph over Cleopatra. 
The paintings at Herculaneum, which are delineative of Egyptian scenery, represent the mighty River-horse browsing upon the 
herbage of an island while the Crocodile is basking amid flags and bulrushes. In the famons Mosaic pavement at Preneste, 
also, which exhibits the plants and animals of Egypt, the two figures are given in the same group upon the Nile. But although, 
after that date, the figure of the Hippopotamus appeared on various medals of the Roman Emperors, it was not until many 
ages afterwards that any authentic history of the animal could be obtained. 
About the middle of the sixteenth century, Belon saw at Constantinople a living Hippopotamus, of which nevertheless he 
zives but an imperfect representation,— the two figures with which he has illustrated his description uot having been drawn 
from the animal he saw, but copied from the reverse of Adrian’s medal, and from the Egyptian Colossus at Rome. Hence the 
era, of any exact knowledge of this animal must be brought down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Frederico 
Zerenghi, a surgeon of Narni, in Italy, published at Naples the history of two Hippopotami which he had taken alive near Da- 
mietta, in a great ditch dug for the purpose in the neighbourhood of the Nile. “With a view,” says the Doctor, “of obtain- 
ing an Hippopotamus, I stationed men upon the Nile, who, having seen two of these animals go out of the river, made a large 
ditch in the way through which they passed, and covered it over with thin planks, earth, and herbage. In the evening, when 
yeturning to the river, they both fell into the ditch. I was immediately informed of the event, and having hastened to the place 
with my Janizary, we killed both the animals by pouring three shots into each of their heads from a large arquebuse, They 
almost instantly expired, after uttering a cry which bore greater resemblance to the bellowing of a buffalo than to the neighing 
of a horse. This exploit was performed on the 20th day of July, 1600. The following day they were drawn out of the ditch, 
aud carefully flayed. They proved male and female, and I caused their skins to be salted, and stuffed with the leaves of the 
sugar cane, in order to transport them to Cairo, where they were salted a second time with greater attention and conyenience, 
each skin requiring four hundred pounds weight of salt. On my return from Egypt in 1601, T brought them to Venice, and 
