Azara, the eminent Spanish naturalist of the end of the eighteenth century, had considerable experience of the peccaries of Central and Southern America, where the Indians are much addicted to taming wild animals, and keep both the peccary and the tapir in a state of semi-domestication. The peccary he found to be domesticated more easily than might be expected. Though so fierce in its wild state, it soon becomes troublesome from its familiarity.
Mr. Schomburgk, the explorer of Central America, whose travels were so constantly quoted during the Venezuelan arbitration, saw much of the white-lipped species in the forests. He found the animals in large troops under the leadership of an old boar. When attacked, they were ready to surround man, dog, or jaguar; and if there were no means of escape, the enemy was certain to be cut to pieces. He himself had a narrow escape from an infuriated herd, the leader of which he shot in the act of rushing at him. As the herd approached the sound was like that of a whirlwind through the bushes.
Photo by Scholastic Photo. Co.] [Parson's Green.
A YOUNG COLLARED PECCARY.
In this specimen the white collar from which the species takes its name is very clearly displayed.
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.
BY F. C. SELOUS.
Two species of the Hippopotamus Family exist on the earth to-day, both of which are inhabitants of Africa, and are not found in any other country; but the remains of many extinct forms of this genus which have been discovered in various parts of Europe and Asia show that in Pleistocene and Pliocene times these strange and uncouth animals must have been widely distributed throughout the greater part of the Old World. The fossil remains of the large form of hippopotamus which once frequented the lakes and rivers of England and Western Europe cannot be distinguished from the bones of the common African species of to-day, which latter is possibly the only animal in the world which has undergone no change in form or structure since the prehistoric savages of the Thames Valley threw stone-headed spears at their enemies.
The Common Hippopotamus, though it has long been banished from the Lower Nile, and has more recently been practically exterminated in the British colonies south of the Limpopo, was once an inhabitant of every lake and river throughout the entire African Continent from the delta of the Nile to the neighbourhood of Cape Town. Now it is not found below Khartum, on the Nile; but in Southern Africa a few hippopotamuses are said still to exist in the lower reaches of the Orange River. When Van Riebeck first landed at the Cape, in 1652, he found some of these animals in the swamp now occupied by Church Square, in the centre of Cape Town, and the last in the district was only killed in the Berg River, about seventy miles north of that city, as recently as 1874. This animal, which had been protected for some years, was at last shot, as it had become very savage, and was in the habit of attacking any one who approached it. In my own experience I have met with the hippopotamus in all the large rivers of Africa where I have travelled, such as the Zambesi, Kafukwe, Chobi, Sabi, Limpopo, and Usutu, and also in most of the many large streams which take their rise on the plateau of Matabililand and Mashonaland, and flow north, south, and east into the Zambesi, the Limpopo, or the Sabi. I have also seen them in the sea, at the mouth of the Quillimani River, and have heard from natives that they will travel by sea from the mouth of one river to another.