HIPPOPOTAMUS, OR ZEEKOE.—Hippopotamus Amphibius.
Marcus Scaurus was the first to exhibit this animal at Rome, together with five crocodiles, at the games which he gave in his ædileship, in a piece of water which had been temporarily prepared for the purpose. The hippopotamus has even been our instructor in one of the operations of medicine. When the animal has become too bulky by continued overfeeding, it goes down to the banks of the river, and examines the reeds which have been newly cut; as soon as it has found a stump that is very sharp, it presses its body against it, and so wounds one of the veins in the thigh; and, by the flow of blood thus produced, the body, which would otherwise have fallen into a morbid state, is relieved; after which, it covers up the wound with mud.
CHAPTER XIII.
PROGNOSTICS OF DANGER DERIVED FROM ANIMALS.
Nature has bestowed upon many animals the faculty of observing the heavens, and of presaging the winds, rains, and tempests, each in its own peculiar way. It would be an endless labor to enumerate them all; just as much as it would be to point out the relation of each to man. For, in fact, they warn us of danger, not only by their fibres and their entrails, to which a large portion of mankind attach the greatest faith, but by other kinds of warnings as well. When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it, and the spiders with their webs are the first to drop. Divination from birds has been made a science among the Romans, and the college of its priests is looked upon as peculiarly sacred. In Thrace, when all parts are covered with ice, the foxes are consulted, an animal which, in other respects, is baneful from its craftiness. It has been observed, that this animal applies its ear to the ice, for the purpose of testing its thickness; and the inhabitants will never cross frozen rivers and lakes until the foxes have passed over them and returned.
COMMON MOUSE.—Mus Músculus (White, Brown and Pied Varieties).
We have accounts, too, no less remarkable, in reference even to the most contemptible of animals. Marcus Varro informs us, that a town in Spain was undermined by rabbits, and one in Thessaly, by mice; that the inhabitants of a district in Gaul were driven from their country by frogs, and a place in Africa by locusts; that the inhabitants of Gyarus, one of the Cyclades, were driven away by mice; and the Amunclæ, in Italy, by serpents. There is a vast desert tract on this side of the Æthiopian Cynamolgi, the inhabitants of which were exterminated by scorpions and venomous ants, and Theophrastus informs us, that the people of Rhœteum were driven away by multipede insects. But we must now return to the other kinds of wild beasts.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HYÆNA.
The neck of the hyæna with the mane, runs continuously into the back-bone, so that the animal cannot bend this part without turning round the whole body. Many wonderful things are also related of this animal; and strangest of all, that it imitates the human voice among the stalls of the shepherds; and while there, learns the name of some one of them, and then calls him away, and devours him. It is said also, that it can imitate a man vomiting, and that, in this way, it attracts the dogs, and then falls upon them. It is the only animal that digs up graves, in order to obtain the bodies of the dead. The female is rarely caught: its eyes, it is said, are of a thousand various colors and changes of shade. It is said also, that on coming in contact with its shadow, dogs will lose their voice, and that, by certain magical influences, it can render any animal immovable, round which it has walked three times.