but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as
the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least,
appears from Herodotus, who says:--"Those which are found in the
district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are
not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than
an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth
of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin.
Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors
on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an
Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus
exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less
than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and
the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami.
The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his
mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately
been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and
another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866.
With regard to the alleged disappearance of the 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. Cuvier detected bones of the
Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in
Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially
in the Sewatick Hills in India.
In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of
Hippopotami--one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and
allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is
about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown
animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to
tail--a size worthy the description of the Behemoth.
We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes
the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the
creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is
made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he
retires into it again.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Professor Owen.
LION-TALK.
The Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen
considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his
conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of
olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that
much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these
results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from
the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous
adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and
character of the overrated Lion.
Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these
very sensible remarks:--"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our
imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of
courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by
generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal,
as in too many other instances, has suffered himself to be borne along
by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his
native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers
and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his
habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid
antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey--or
where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no
adequate protection against his impetuous agility--he stalks boldly to
and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man--even in
that of uncultivated savages--_he skulks in treacherous ambush for his
prey_. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that
when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or
revenge; and when in captivity--his wants being provided for, and his
feelings not irritated--he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in
his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But
even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions
from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge--and these he
frequently cherishes for a long period--with various other circumstances
which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated
state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an
animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his
victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds
upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as
the type of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most
astonishing!"
The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful
beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to
dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is
any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers
who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest
character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that
Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the
cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by
surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the
violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the
appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the
Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great
size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken
in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr.
Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the
Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the
little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on;
but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may
be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will
seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion
has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement
than between a Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes
the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and
on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement
the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply
afflicted with melancholy at similar losses.
The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of
Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more
than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's
hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the
Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to
be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one
will understand who has _heard_ the Lion tear the raw meat away from the
bone of his food.
Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or
generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from
a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the
individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon
him.
Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are
yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst
they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still
extraordinary animal.
The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very
applicable to him, seeing that Mr. Burchell at least never met with
but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of
the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the
sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass
of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the
most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man
(and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no
reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute.
A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the
same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke
without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse
about a mile from the spot where he had killed it.
There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be
this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the
necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's
reach. Ælian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by
an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the
Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are
used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since
the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons
were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and
destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported
by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms
on which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the
ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has
three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four.
The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are
built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons
conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due
east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about
1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as
well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise
whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the
ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these
platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night.
Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool
sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when
roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near,
and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot,
till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their
demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed,
are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and
crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of
the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft,
the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter
of the moment, the vital parts are missed, or the ball passes by,
leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his
enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always
the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances,
saved the life of the hunter.
There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the
dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one
that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous
sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are
very various--from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of
the colonist.
The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness
of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want
of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa
are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without
encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of
remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate
of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the
powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so
compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little
sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that
of a middle-sized dog.
The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were
formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are
confined to Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and
more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found
in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that
the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the
country of the Reonians and the Crestonæi on their march from Acanthus
(near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica
(now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other
beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above
story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains
at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that
Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was
unarmed.
Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion
has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine,
or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The
frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various
Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of
the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in
Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and
Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have,
as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be
wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for
the Roman arena,--and they were not inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman
has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty
years,--population and civilization have gradually driven them within
narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in
modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the
bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in
his ædileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with
those of Pompey and Cæsar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six
hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three
hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors
consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the
people.
The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man
farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:--"His
true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from
the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south,
he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia,
in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of
Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic
soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which
were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and
extirpated."
Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of Arabia; but their proper
country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers
are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the
influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that
those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst
the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign
the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never
meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The
nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their
rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had
experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being
superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler
climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where
rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of
madness fatal to every animal they meet with.
The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very
extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot
from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an
olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the
Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was
at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his
thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off. The Lion,
however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred
yards of his dwelling.
Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at
Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a
tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next
morning the Lion walked up a hill _with the man in his mouth_, when
about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was
perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that
the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued
by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the
mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots
adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he
roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short
time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.
The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa
principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the
generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African.
William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine
Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower
collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent
development of the mane is very striking in this figure.
Maneless Lions have been found on the confines of Arabia, and were
known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be
represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has
neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of
Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds
which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble
animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack
the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives
a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off
with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks
after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does
not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by
flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with
his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed,
Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after
breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him
in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a
blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.
In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological
Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in
Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence
of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and
furnished at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the
tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is
fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless
Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet
9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4
inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions
are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low,
bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of
high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass.
Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in
this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of
about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously
to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by
these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however,
do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn
that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they
exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their
pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.
In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes
a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young
with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then
on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with
a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion,
which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of
only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete
effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion
fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and
wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that
the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and
there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a
male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a
very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.
The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and
sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present
to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew
like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to
appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is
considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The _roar_ of the adult
Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being
proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other
animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble
the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by
the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a
half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.
The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty
or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will,
it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766,
was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from
the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at
the age of sixty-three.