Hippodamia

“ We shall therefore only recognise one genus.
The Hippopotamus at present is African in range, and confined to that continent. But quite recently it inhabited Madagascar; and further back still in time the existing African species, H. amphibius, ranged into Europe; there were also Indian forms, which were contemporary with the Stone-age man. The Common Hippopotamus is a great thick-skinned beast with but few hairs. It has four toes on each foot, a complex stomach, but no caecum. The strong incisors continue growing through life, as do the great canines. ”

“ The hippopotamus, having selected some still reach of the river to spend the day, rises out of the bottom, where he has been enjoying his morning bath after the labours of the night on shore, blows a puff of spray from his nostrils, shakes the water out of his ears, puts his enormous snout up straight and yawns, sounding a loud alarm to the rest of the herd, with notes as of a monster bassoon. ”

“ If caught young the baby hippopotamus is easily tamed, but he isn't bright enough to learn tricks. When his keeper comes to his cage he opens his two-foot wide mouth and begs for food in the most comical way. He asks for it much as a pig does. At home a herd of hippopotamuses at play shout with loud, harsh voices, but in a cage they creak and groan and squeal like very rusty hinges of a door.When a herd of hippopotamuses in the Nile River becomes tired of a diet of water plants, they climb up higher and steeper banks than you could climb, break into fields and eat wheat and sugar cane. ”

“ She threw herself in his way and trod the shore with dainty, mincing steps, her tail undulating after her in graceful folds. To her disgust, he seemed unconscious of her presence. He lifted his head, indeed, and gave her a lazy look of indifference, but turned immediately again to his loafing through the mud and water. The hippopotamus is not a lively animal, not of an inquiring mind, almost without curiosity, and, I am grieved to say, utterly without sentiment. ”

“ The hippopotamus feeds on grass alone, and, where there is any danger, only at night. Its enormous lips act like a mowing-machine, and form a path of short-cropped grass as it feeds. We never saw it eat aquatic plants or reeds. The tusks seem weapons of both offence and defence. The hippopotamus trap consists of a beam five or six feet long, armed with a spear-head or hard-wood spike, covered with poison, and suspended to a forked pole by a cord, which, coming down to the path, is held by a catch, to be set free when the beast treads on it. Being wary brutes, they are still very numerous. ”

“ The reader should be curious to notice this at the Zoological Gardens. When the old hippo opens its mouth, a good-sized baby could as easily be put in as one puts a letter into a letter-box. As the elephant makes passes in the jungles, so it appears to me that one of the chief offices of the hippopotamus is to keep in check the dense vegetation in tropical climates, which, if allowed to accumulate, would block up the long reaches of rivers, and ultimately turn the flat lands into useless, fever-breeding swamps: so that we see this gigantic animal is of very considerable economic importance. ”

“ Hippo belonged to a herd consisting of from twenty to thirty hippopotami—mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, relations of all kinds, and several little baby calves. They agreed well together, on the whole.
The only time they grew quarrelsome was when they were selecting new wives, or when one of them had discovered a field of corn or rice, and found that the others wanted to explore it, too. Then some nasty things were said, and some terrible fights took place; for, although a hippopotamus is such a heavy and ungainly creature, he can move swiftly when he is angry. ”

“ A full-grown male is about 5 feet, 6 inches in shoulder height, and 10 feet 6 inches long from end of nose to root of tail. The length of the horn is not great, rarely exceeding 12 inches. The skin is very thick, and lies upon the animal in great rigid slabs which are divided by articulating areas of thinner skin.
The Hippopotamus, (Hippopotamus amphibius) , is more frequently seen in captivity than any of the large rhinoceroses, or the African elephant. In the lakes and large rivers of central East Africa it still exists in fair numbers, and still is killed for “sport.” ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that when the hippopotamus is at liberty in its native stream, not only the ears and the nostrils, but even the ridge over the eyes are of a bright scarlet color, so brilliant indeed that color can scarcely convey an idea of the hue. The specimens in the Zoological Gardens, although fine examples of the species, never exhibit this brilliancy of color, and, indeed, are no more like the hippopotamus in its own river than a prize hog is like a wild boar. ”

“ Hippopotamus from Lower Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one.
In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a very distinct animal.
We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as formerly existing in England and in France. ”

“ The type-genus of the family is Hippurites itself (fig. 199) , in which the shell is in the shape of a straight or slightly-twisted horn, sometimes a foot or more in length, constituted by the attached lower valve, and closed above by a small lid-like free upper valve. About a hundred species of the family of the Hippuritidœ are known, all of these being Cretaceous, and occurring in Britain (one species only) , in Southern Europe, the West Indies, North America, Algeria, and Egypt. ”

“ Now it is perfectly true of the hippopotamus that it eats grass like an ox, or like cattle, as the passage may be translated. In order to supply its huge massive body with nourishment, it consumes vast quantities of food, as indeed may be inferred from the structure of its mouth and jaws. The mouth is enormously broad and shovel-shaped, so as to take in a large quantity of food at once; and the gape is so wide, that when the animal opens its jaws to their full extent it seems to split its head into two nearly equal portions. ”

“ The havoc which such an animal can make among growing crops may be easily imagined. It is fond of leaving the river, and forcing its way into cultivated grounds, where it eats vast quantities of green food, and destroys as much as it eats, by the trampling of its heavy feet. Owing to the width of the animal, the feet are placed very far apart, and the consequence is that the hippopotamus makes a double path, the feet of each side trampling down the herbage, and causing the track to look like a double rut, with an elevated ridge between them. ”

“ It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman name imports, it was usual to consider him as a [Pg 116] species of horse, inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner, the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnæus among his belluæ, between equus and sus. The skeleton approaches that of the ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other animal. ”

“ Young hippopotami have been captured and placed in zoological gardens, but as they become old they grow savage, and are very hard to manage. Some fine specimens were formerly in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. They ate all kinds of vegetables and grass, and slept nearly all day, generally lying half in and half out of the big water tank provided for them.
The hippopotamus is supposed by many to be identical with the behemoth of Scripture, which is described as a beast "that lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed and fens." ”

“ If a hippopotamus is killed within fifty miles of [132] Sesheke half of it is always sent to the king, and the breast reserved for the royal table. It is at night-time that the hippopotamus generally goes to its pasturage, in the choice of which it is very particular, sometimes making its way eight or nine miles along the river-bank, and returning at daybreak to its resort in the river or lagoons, where its presence is revealed by its splashes and snorts. ”

“ With one bite it could cut through the middle of the body of a full-grown man.
The natives of Africa hunt the Hippopotamus, first to obtain the ivory furnished by its tusks—an ivory which, without being so good as that of the Elephant, is nevertheless very valuable. The skin, or hide, which is very thick, is also employed in the manufacture of various instruments. The flesh of the Hippopotamus is sought after in South Africa as a delicate morsel. ”

“ By comparing these descriptions, and especially that of Zerenghi, with the information we have drawn from travellers, the hippopotamus appears to be an animal whose body is longer and as thick as that of the rhinoceros; that his legs are much shorter; that his head is not so long, but larger in proportion to his body: that he has no horns, either on the nose like the rhinoceros, or on the head like [104] the ruminating animals. His cry when hurt, according to ancient and modern travellers, resembles the neighing of a horse and the bellowing of the buffalo ”

“ He certainly looks to greater advantage in this country than he does in his own; for here a rose-coloured blush tinges his skin, and there he is too often covered with mud, to wear any other appearance than that of a dirty brown.
The hippopotamus is exclusively a denizen of Africa; and perfectly harmless when unprovoked; except that he sometimes gets into the plantations in the vicinity of his haunts, and crushes and devours a crop of maize, or millet. He would rather avoid fighting or quarreling ”

“ As they always travel in herds of twenty or thirty, it is no small misfortune for a herd to visit any section under cultivation. It is little wonder, then, that war has been waged against them, until in some regions they have ceased to exist. [Pg 342] Doubtless this accounts for the fact that they are no longer found in the districts of Lower Egypt, though found to quite a large extent farther up the Nile.
The common hippopotamus is one of the largest of all living animals. The bulk of its body is very nearly as great as that of the elephant. ”

“ At night time they abandon their watery haunts to prowl among the sugar-cane plantations, the fields of millet and rice, which they devour with eagerness. Their march is so impetuous, that they break down every barrier; nothing can resist them.
The hippopotamus is spread over all eastern and southern Africa; is found in Nubia, Ethiopia, Abyssinia; at the Cape, the Senegal and the Congo. Both the settlers and the natives of these countries hunt them with ardour for the sake of the ivory they yield, nor is their flesh despised by a keen appetite and vigorous stomach. ”

“ The water was discoloured at the time, and we were not without apprehension that a crocodile might chance to fancy a white man for dinner. Next day one of the men crawled over the black rocks to within ten yards of a sleeping hippopotamus, and shot him through the brain. The weather being warm, the body floated in a few hours, and some of us had our first trial of hippopotamus flesh. It is a cross-grained meat, something between pork and beef,—pretty good food when one is hungry and can get nothing better. ”

“ If the gardens or fields should happen to be near the river side, there is no worse foe for them than the hippopotamus, which is only too glad to exchange its ordinary food for the rich banquet which it finds in cultivated grounds. If a single hippopotamus should once succeed in getting into a garden, a terrible destruction to the crop takes place. In the first place, the animal can consume an almost illimitable amount of green food: and when it gets among such dainties as cornfields and pumpkin patches, it indulges its appetite inordinately. ”

“ But, in the first place, it does not follow that, because the hippopotamus was held sacred in the Papremitic nome, it was found in the {458}Nile as low as that district. In the next place, there is nothing in the words of Herodotus to indicate that he had seen the object of his description. (ii. 71.) On the other hand, the substance of his description tends strongly to the inference that he had not seen the animal. It is difficult to conceive that any eye-witness could have described a hippopotamus as having the hoofs of an ox, with the mane and tail of a horse. ”

“ In consequence of the continual persecution to which it is subjected, the hippopotamus becomes exceedingly wary, and, huge, clumsy, and blundering as it looks, is clever enough to detect either pitfall or drop-trap that have not been contrived with especial care. An old and experienced hippopotamus becomes so wary that he will be suspicious even of a bent twig, and, rather than venture across it, he will leave the path, force for himself a roundabout passage, and return to the path beyond the object that alarmed him. ”

“ The hippopotamus or hippo as it is generally called, is another mighty animal that is rapidly being exterminated by man. At one time it was a common sight to see many hippos feeding together on the banks of the Nile as far north as Cairo but now they are never found beyond Khartoum, which if you will look at the atlas you will find is many miles to the south of the Mediterranean Sea. ”