after him with his mouth open-and such a mouth !—in all the beauty of ugliness. This playful running after its friends open-mouthed may be interpreted in two ways: first, as it would act with its mother, half in play, half as a hint for nourishment; and secondly, as a lamb, a goat, or a calf butts, before their horns have budded, betraying a consciousness on the part of our gambolling pachyderm of the locality where the terrible offensive armour is to be with which hereafter he may bite with a vengeance.

Professor Owen states that we may reckon this young animal to be ten months old, and that it is now seven feet long, and six and a-half feet in girth at the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, which is supported, clear of the ground, on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs, of which the innermost is the smallest on the forefoot; the two middle ones, answering to those which are principally developed in the hog, are the largest in both feet.

The hind-limb (writes Professor Owen in continuation) is buried in the skin of the flank nearly to the prominence of the heel. Thick flakes of cuticle are in process of detachment from the sole. There is a well-defined white patch behind each foot, but I looked in vain for any indications of the glandular orifice which exists in the same part in the rhinoceros. The naked hide covering the broad back and sides is of a dark India-rubber colour, impressed by numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other, but disposed almost transversely. When I first saw the beast it had just left its bath, and a minute drop of a glistening secretion was exuding from each of the conspicuous muco-sebaceous pores, which are dispersed over the whole integument, at intervals of from eight lines to an inch. This gave the hide, as it glistened in the sunshine, a very peculiar aspect. When the animal was younger the secretion had a reddish colour, and being poured out more abundantly, the whole surface became painted over with it every time he quitted his bath.

Nothing can be more correct than this admirable description, with the exception of the alleged nakedness of the skin. The integument, at first sight, does appear naked; but it is found, as I have stated above, on a close

inspection, to be covered with very fine downy hairs, which will, probably, totally or partially vanish as the animal advances in age.

The gambols and civilities of this denizen of the Nile are not confined to his keepers. I had been told that, when out in the giraffe-paddock, one of the giraffes had bowed down its head to him one day, and that the hippopotamus opened his mouth and took the giraffe's muzzle into the gulf, which seems to be his way of kissing. On Sunday, the 9th of June, I saw one of the giraffes do the same thing, with exactly the same result. He had, I have been told, formed an acquaintance with a giraffe which was to have been brought over with him, but was unfortunately drowned.

Such is the quadruped whose animal magnetism Punch has so forcibly depicted attracting the crowds who are hurrying to its presence. If a mate-and this is far from improbable should be sent over to join him in August by the same liberal and friendly potentate to whom we owe the present object of admiration, who shall predict the consequence of the double attraction?

The third Gordian did not live to see the portentous games for which he had caused so vast an assemblage of wild beasts to be brought to Rome. The milliarium sæculum was celebrated by Philip not without suspicion, almost amounting to proof, that the blood of his predecessor was on his head. Philip, in his turn, did not live long after the celebration of that prolonged festival, during which two thousand gladiators at once joined in the death-struggle for the gratification of the people. Defeated by Decius, who had got himself proclaimed emperor in Pannonia, Philip fell under the merciless hands of his own soldiers near Verona, in the year of Christ 249, before he had completed his forty-fifth year, and before the fifth year of his enjoyment of his bad eminence had run its course. The hippopotamus, which formed a prin

cipal feature in those murderous diversions, appears not only on the large brass of Otacilia Severa, but also on one of Philip (about A.D. 247), and on another of Hadrian. These, and the well-known plinth of the statue of Nilus, show how familiar this huge form was to Roman eyes.

I have not heard whether Mr. Wyon* has been directed to strike a medal to commemorate this substantial gift of his Highness the Viceroy of Egypt, or whether Mr. Gibson has received a commission to immortalize him in marble; but there can be no doubt that Sir Edwin Landseer must hand down his likeness to posterity.

August, 1850.

* While these sheets were passing through the press in their present form, this gifted artist died, regretted by all who knew him and his works.

190

CHAPTER IX.

OR behold, I wil send serpents and cockatrices among you,

FOR I w'il se charmed; and they shall sting you, saith

the Lord.-Jerem. viii. 17.

Such is the version given in Barker's Bible,* of the passage which figuratively threatens the sending of the Babylonians among the Jews, 'who,' as the old commentator writes in the margin, 'shall utterly destroy them in such sort, as by no meanes they shall escape.'

The version now read in our churches runs thus,—

For behold I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord; and is more correct, zoologically speaking.

What the serpents threatened were, is more apocryphal. The Greek version has 'basilisks.' Both basilisks and cockatrices at least those so-called venomous creatures, of which such marvellous tales are to be found in old authors-are fabulous creations. The Hebrew word is Tsephuon or Tsiphoni (Tsepha or Zepha), and has been rendered as applicable to the aspic, the regulus (another word for the basilisk), the hæmorrhoos, the viper, and the cerastes.

But whatever the species of serpents may be, the passage above cited, as well as others, which will readily occur to the scriptural scholar, shows the great antiquity of the art of charming serpents. Thus, in Psalm lviii. we have the following description of the wicked :—

:

4. Their poyson is even like the poyson of a serpent: like the deafe adder that stoppeth his eare.

* 1615.

5. Which heareth not the voyce of the inchanter, though he be most expert in charming.*

These incantations were too tempting to be neglected by the poets. The shepherd in Virgil alludes to their destructive powers:

Carminibus Circe socios mutavit Ulixi:

Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur anguis.†

Manilius and Ovid use nearly the same expressions. The words of the former are,

Consultare fibras, et rumpere vocibus angues.

And the Poet of Love, the Moore of his day, writes:Carmine dissiliunt abruptis faucibus angues

Inque suos fontes versa recurrit aqua.‡

The Psylli, and their neighbours the Marmaridæ, were among the most famous for their power over serpents. These African charmers of snakes, and the Italian Marsi, carried, if we are to believe one half of the accounts recorded of their feats, this magic art to the highest point of infallibility. The magi played upon pipes made of the legs and bones of cats to call the serpents together; upon the same principle, I suppose, that actuated the less ambitious enchanters, who, to rid themselves of mice, played upon a pipe made of their vertebræ, the dulcet and at

*Barker's Bible. In the version now read in our churches the words are:

4. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

5. Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.

And in the Book of Common Prayer the words are :—

4. They are as venomous as the poison of a serpent: even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears;

5. Which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer: charm he never so wisely.

† Pharmaceutria, Eclog. viii.

Amor. lib. ii. El. 1.