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from thence to Rome, and showed them to several intelligent physicians. Doctor Jerome Aquapendente, and the celebrated 
Aldrovandus, were the only persons who recognized them to be the spoils of the Hippopotamus ; and as the latter’s work 
was then printing, I allowed him to draw a figure from the skin of the female, which he inserted in his book.” 
The aquatic habits of the, species, no less than the secluded nature of its haunts, are of course greatly opposed to an 
intimate acquaintance with its manner of living; but one thing is certain, that modern Hippopotami have retained little of 
the dexterity or the cunning of their ancestors, whom Pliny represents to have been in the constant habit of walking back- 
wards in order to deceive their pursuers—the more simple plan of getting their shoes reversed, as King Robert Bruce did 
those of his horse, having not perhaps occurred to them. The mode in which the animal, when wounded, contrived to moor 
himself by the teeth to the roots of water-trees; and his method of performing venesection, when he found himself so 
shamefully embonpoint, as to be in danger of apoplexy, were even more ingenious. “The Hippopotamus,” says Pére Labat, 
“being of a very sanguiferous temperament, knows well how to let blood of himself. For this purpose, he searches for a sharp 
pointed rock, and rubs himself against it, till he makes a sufficient aperture for the blood to flow. To promote the flux, he then 
agitates his body, and when he thinks he has lost a sufficient quantity, he rolls in the mud in order to shut up the wound.” 
“] have known,” says Capt. Covent, in a letter to Dampier, “the Hippopotamus to open his mouth, and set one tooth on the 
gunnel of a boat, and another on the second strake from the keel (which was more than four feet distant), and there bit a 
hole through the plank, and sink the boat; and after he had done, he went away shaking his ears. His strength is incredibly 
great, for I haye seen him, in the wash of the shore, when the sea has tossed in a Dutchman's boat with fourteen hogs- 
heads of water in her, upon the said beast, and left it high and dry on its back, and another sea came, and fetched the 
boat off, and the beast was not hurt, in as far as J could perceive. We made several shots at him, but to no purpose, for 
they would glance off him as from a wall, It is the custom of the natives, when he comes near their canoes, to throw him 
fish,* and then he passeth away, and will not meddle with their fishing craft. They call him Kittimpungo. He doth most 
mischief when he can stand on the ground; but when afloat, hath only power to bite. As ons boat once lay near the shore, 
I saw him go under her, and with his back lift her out of the water, and overset her with six men aboard, but as it hap- 
pened did them no harm. Whilst we lay in the road, we had three of them which did trouble the bay every full and change, 
and two or three days after. The natives say they go together, two males and one female, and their noise is much like the 
bellowing of a large calf.” The males are said to contest each other's right to the females, and the attack of two such power- 
ful animals, as may naturally be imagined, is terrible. The earth shakes beneath them—the water trembles—their blood 
flows in torrents, and the masses of flesh torn out by their mighty grasp of teeth, lie scattered upon the blood-stamed scene 
of conflict. Sometimes, the weaker, perceiving his efforts ineffectual, leaves his autagonist master of the field, but this does 
not often happen, for it is seldom that one or both of them does not perish on the spot. 
Onesicritus, and other old authors, assert that the Hippopotamus inhabited Asia, and abounded in the river Indus, but 
Alexander’s letter to Aristotle, which forms the only foundation for such an opinion, is so far from being conclusive, that 
it seems probable the range of its habitat has always been limited to the lakes and rivers of Afriea, more especially to those 
of her Southern and Hastern regions. Common in Egpyt in days of yore, ere modern weapons had taught it to fear man as 
an enemy before whom it must retire, it divided with the mail-clad Crocodile the empire of the Nile and its Delta — that 
noble stream, over whose source mystery had cast a veil, and whose waters whilst spreading the blessings of seed time and 
harvest throughout a country where millions greeted their overflow, teemed at the same time with productions monstrous and 
terrific, against which neither the spear nor the arrow availed but little, The Hippopotamus was consequently well known 
to the Israelites of old, and with the Egyptians the chase of him formed a favourite amusement, Although not so hostile to 
man as the voracious Crocodile, he was yet looked upon as an enemy, on account of his extensive nocturnal depredations; and 
the value attached to his spoils, of which were manufactured whips, shields, javelins, and helmets, ereated an additional incite- 
ment to his destruction. Their mode of attack would appear, from the sculptures of Thebes, to have been very similar to 
that practised at the present day about Sennaar, where the hunters prefer badgering the animal in the river, to an open combat 
on shore, and employ the harpoon as in whaling. “It is chased,” says Diodorus Siculus, who deseribes the Hippopotamus 
more correctly than any other ancient author, “by many persons, armed with iron javelins. No sooner does it make its appear- 
ance at the surface of the water, than they surround it with boats, and closing in on all sides, strike it with blades furnished 
with iron barbs, and having hempen ropes fastened to them, in order that when wounded, they may be let out until its strength 
fails from struggling and loss of blood.” Authors inform us, that after’ the species had become nearly extinet in Nubia, the 
accidental descent of a luckless straggler along the river, occasioned scarcely less astonishment to the people who witnessed 
the intrusion, than to the bewildered animal itself. As usual on such occasions, the unintentional trespasser upon ground where 
it had ceased to be an object of terror, was punished with a promptitude which would hardly have been displayed in places 
where it was really obnoxious—every Turk or peasant who could muster a weapon, being fired with the same proud desire of 
| destroying the intruder, and evincing the same chivalrous feeling which is usually called forth against an imprudent porpoise that 
may have ventured to pass the bridges of the English metropolis. 
* The ancients believed that the Hippopotamus subsisted entirely upon fish, crocodiles, and cadaverous flesh. 
+ Enevelonedia Brit. 
