158 MAMMALS

fast scattered over the luggage, that I seized my
Winchester, and fired it at his head as the great
creature lifted it from the water a few yards off to
see what damage he had done.” When the hippo
rises he blows from his nostrils much as if he were
a whale, but when he dives he goes down tail
first. He has a terribly large mouth with awkward-
looking teeth, but he feeds only on vegetables, and
requires a stomach over ten feet long in which to
digest them.

 

SKULL OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

The ungulates with the odd toes, the Perisso-
dactyls, are the tapirs, the horses and the rhinoceroses.
The tapirs are recognisable at once by their project-
ing snouts, owing to which they have been described
as ‘pigs with short trunks.” They have three toes
on the hind feet, and four on the front ; but one of
these, the fifth in number, hardly touches the ground.
As in all the other modern representatives of the sub-
order, there is no trace in either foot of the first digit
answering to our thumb and great toe. The tapirs