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Hippopotamus   /hˌɪpəpˈɑtəməs/   Listen
Hippopotamus

noun
(pl. E. hippopotamuses, L. hippopotami)
1.
Massive thick-skinned herbivorous animal living in or around rivers of tropical Africa.  Synonyms: hippo, Hippopotamus amphibius, river horse.



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"Hippopotamus" Quotes from Famous Books



... the opinion, for instance, Dr. Reasono, that Socrates is now a monikin philosopher, with his brain unravelled and rendered logically consecutive, and that Epicurus is transformed perchance into a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the leafage of the high trees. There in the plains were herds of buffalo too numerous to count, quagga, zebra, gnu, eland, and bok of all kinds. There was a great river there, he said, full of fish, and with great crocodiles ready to seize upon the unwary. The hippopotamus was there too, big and massive, ready to upset boats or to attack all he ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... allegorical impersonation of the river, such as might be made by a modern artist who made no pretence to believe in the existence of such an anthropomorphic river-god. It cannot be counted as religious art at all. And the attributes and accessories of such a figure, the crocodile and hippopotamus, the sphinx and corn and horn of plenty, are all of them symbolic allusions such as are suitable to such a frigid personification. The art of Alexandria is full of such devices; that of Pergamon is more vigorous ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner

... subject, like a religious teacher, to all kinds of conflicting interpretations. He puzzled and exasperated even intelligent people. They often wondered what he meant and whether it was worth writing about. Mr. Wells, or whoever wrote Boon, compared him to a hippopotamus picking up a pea. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... outspanning that evening by the hot but beautiful river which was still haunted by a few hippopotamus and many crocodiles, one of which we shot before turning in. Next morning, having breakfasted off cold guineafowl, we mounted, crossed the river by a ford that was quite as deep as I liked, to which the Kaffir path led ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... who cared for the beasts. One hot evening, just about sunset, when I was already thinking of riding off home to bathe and dine, while I was lingering to watch his keepers urging their little gang of slaves to pour more and more water over a gasping hippopotamus, there was a yell of alarm all along the line and a scampering, scattering rush of fleeing men; teamsters, attendants and keepers. A panther had broken out of its cage, when a ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... far north as Germany in the Miocene Age were restricted to Southern France and Italy in the Pliocene, and, at its close, vanished altogether from Europe. The first living species of mammals is found in the remains of the hippopotamus that frequented the rivers of Pliocene times. The mastodon of Miocene times was still to be seen, but along with it was a species of true elephants. The hipparion survived into this epoch, but the horse also makes its appearance. Great quantities of deer roamed over the land; and, as might ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... Bay and the Boastful Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler Bolton's new Hippopotamus in the place of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the correct thing in pictures this year, and no woman with any claim to be considered smart will fail to have it over her piano. Marcus Stone's new engraving will also be rather chic. Watts's Hope is now considered a little ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... among Biblical commentators whether the Rhinoceros or the Hippopotamus is the Behemoth of Scripture, but as the Rhinoceros feeds on furze and the Hippopotamus does not, it would seem that the terminal syllable "moth" more properly applies to the latter. As numerous fossil remains of the animal have ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... the outer elements absent. The horse comes last with one large toe and hoof, but on either side of the main bones of this digit are vestiges of what must have been toes in its ancestors. Among the even-toed forms the hippopotamus has four which reach the ground, with a vestige of a fifth, so this animal has apparently descended from a typical mammal with the full number along a different line from that taken by the odd-toed forms. A pig has a cloven hoof, made up of what we may call the third ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... his life much interested Lord Byron Hero and Leander Hill, Aaron 'Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren.' 'HINTS FROM HORACE,' written at Athens first produced to Mr. Dallas singular preference given by the author to them See also Hippopotamus at Exeter Change Historians, list of, perused by Lord Byron at nineteen Hoare, Mr., Lord Byron's schoolfellow at Harrow Hobbes, Thomas Hobhouse, Right Hon. Henry ——, Right Hon. Sir John Cam, Bart., his 'Journey through Albania' quoted ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... spirits that evening, asked the culprit if he was very fond of tej; the trembling wretch replied in the affirmative. "Well, give him two wanchas [Footnote: A wancha is a large horn cup.] full to make him happy, and afterwards fifty lashes with the girf [Footnote: A long hippopotamus whip.] to teach him another time not to go near the queen's tent." Evidently, Theodore, with a large experience of the beau sexe of his country, was profoundly convinced that his precautions were necessary. On one of his visits to Magdala, one ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... new species: we just threw in the word 'variations' or the word 'sports' (fancy a man of science talking of an unknown factor as a sport instead of as x!) and left them to 'accumulate' and account for the difference between a cockatoo and a hippopotamus. Such phrases set us free to revel in demonstrating to the Vitalists and Bible worshippers that if we once admit the existence of any kind of force, however unintelligent, and stretch out the past to unlimited time for such force to operate accidentally in, that force may conceivably, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... be coming," said the major, looking uneasy. "I'm puzzled, Mark. It was neither lion nor tiger, though something like the roar a lion can give; it was not like an elephant's trumpeting, nor the grunting of a rhinoceros; and it could not be a hippopotamus, for we are out of their range, and there is no big river—there ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... decorations to the naval and military officers. A pretext presented itself; some insult needed to be avenged, or some debt to be collected. Six battleships, fourteen cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river Hippopotamus. Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the troops. Admiral Vivier des Murenes' cannons produced an appalling effect upon the blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows, but in spite of their fanatical courage they were ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... paradise of hunters. Besides the lion and the leopard, there were many other great cats, some of remarkable beauty. Besides the elephant, which was in some districts very abundant, there existed two kinds of rhinoceros, as well as the hippopotamus and the giraffe. There was a wonderful profusion of antelopes,—thirty-one species have been enumerated,—including such noble animals as the eland and koodoo, such beautiful ones as the springbok and klipspringer, such fierce ones ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... between its two eyes was twenty inches, and eighteen inches from one corner of his mouth to the other. Its maw was like a leather sack, very thick, and so tough that a sharp knife could scarce cut it, in which we found the head and bones of a hippopotamus, the hairy lips of which were still sound and not putrified, and the jaw was also firm, out of which we plucked a great many teeth, two of them eight inches long and as big as a man's thumb, small at one ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... did Homo Sapiens first appear? Upon whose speculations shall we bottom us? Contemporary he with the cave bear, But hardly with the earliest hippopotamus. The happy Eocene beheld him not; That cheerful epoch when a morning ramble Among the mammoths, without gun or shot, Must have been such a truly sportive scramble. The pleasant Pliocene preceded him. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various

... meadow that runs round the east shore. Just at dark Billy began to call, and it was beautiful. You know how it goes. Three short grunts, and then a long ooooo-aaaa-ooooh, winding up with another grunt! It sounded lonelier than a love-sick hippopotamus on the house top. It rolled and echoed over the hills as if it would ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... the enemy's country. We cannot sufficiently praise the apparently reckless tactics that made this wonderful march towards the Central Railway, or the uncomplaining fortitude of troops who lived in this fever-stricken country, on hippopotamus meat, wild game and native meal. To the Boer, as to all of us, this campaign must have taught a wonderful lesson, for many prejudices have been modified, and it has been learnt that "coolies" (as only too often the ignorant style all natives of India) ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... condense,[a]—the inhabitants of these different regions appear for the most part to have acquired, before the close of the tertiary period, the characters which essentially distinguish their existing faunas. The eastern continent had then, as now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus; South America its armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters; Australia a crowd of marsupials; and the very strange birds of New Zealand had predecessors of similar strangeness. Everywhere the same geographical distribution as now, with a difference in the particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... Uncle Charlie,—so don't worry. Of course, if it isn't convenient for you to have me for a day or two, I can motor in and out from the city. Money's no object, you know. I've got a roll of expense money here that would choke a hippopotamus." ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... current issues: overgrazing; soil erosion; deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion) threatened because of ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... deep water, promptly dived. About twenty yards from the shore he came up for a moment, then dived again heading for the island. I dare say I could have potted him through the head with a snap shot, but somehow I did not like to kill a man swimming for his life as though he were a hippopotamus or a crocodile. Moreover, the boldness of the manoeuvre appealed to me. So I refrained from firing and called to the others to ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... our old stories; and we shall drop off one by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. There will be but ten prae-railroadites left: then three — then two — then one — then 0! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again. Does he not see that he belongs to bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray

... the little urchin whose marvellous feats of gastronomy have been recorded in the earlier pages of our narrative. She took from the window some specimen or other of natural history,—her eyes being too dim with moisture to inform her accurately whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus,—put it into the child's hand as a parting gift, and went her way. Old Uncle Venner was just coming out of his door, with a wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and, trudging along the street, he scrupled not to keep company with ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... some little excitement at the election; one of the members of the old Board had been called "an ignoramus," in the stress of battle, and being much concerned and mystified asked a neighbour what the term signified, adding, no doubt thinking of a hippopotamus, that he believed it was some kind of animal! His knowledge of zoology was probably as limited as that ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... the cages first. I do not complain of your natural wish to begin with the giraffe, because it has such an absurdly long neck and may possibly mistake Pamela's straw-hat for a bunch of hay and try to eat it, and because you will be able to see the hippopotamus on the way. As a matter of fact you will find that the giraffe is not standing near the bars at all, but close to its stable, where it is mincing and bridling exactly like a lady in a Victorian novel, and as for the hippopotamus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... finds itself baked and burnt up in town, condemned to ovens of operas, and fiery furnaces of levees and drawing-rooms. A day when even ice is warm, and perspiring visitors to the Zoological Gardens envy the hippopotamus living in his bath. A day when a hot, frizzling, sweltering smell ascends ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... dogged determination. She shut her eyes, screwed up her face, spread her arms, struck out with her feet and started. If a hippopotamus had suddenly slipped off the bank there could hardly have been a greater splash; Sarah kicked madly, puffing, panting, and churning the water into foam. All to no avail. Before she had gone a yard she sank like a paving-stone to the bottom of the pool. Blue Bonnet, convulsed ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... don't expect praise, we social workers," Kettleman said instantly. "The worth of a good job well done, that's enough for us." He smiled. The effect was a little unsettling, as if a hippopotamus had begun to laugh like a hyena. "But to continue, Mr. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... field-hospital sergeant, a Marist Brother, a huge bearded simpleton in spectacles. When he has taken off his greatcoat and appears in his jacket, you are conscious that he feels awkward about showing his legs. We see that it hurries discreetly, this silhouette of a bearded hippopotamus. He blows, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... appears that it was not very easy to find a better term. For my own part I should be very much puzzled to find a name really suitable for such an irregular company as this, in which all the huge beasts of the earth—the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus—are heaped one upon the other, side by side with the horse, the ass, and the hog; begging your pardon for an ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... home with the determination to take back a pair of young giraffes, and to pay all expenses of their expedition by this, as also by the sale of hippopotamus teeth. The hope was not an unreasonable one. They knew that fortunes had been made in procuring elephants' tusks, and also that the teeth of the hippopotamus were the finest of ivory, and commanded a price four times greater than ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... in a less favorable light. They accuse him of having, by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign of sixty-two years he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from the Nile. They also relate that the Saite Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition against the Arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of life, had solemnly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... Hippopotamus has recently been brought to England, with all the flesh about it, in a high state of preservation. This amphibious animal was harpooned while in combat with a crocodile, in a lake in the interior of Africa. The head measures near four feet long, and eight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... of Livingstone or Mungo Park, but while the brig is at Zanzibar you will have an opportunity of running across the channel, the island being only a few miles from the main, and having a short run up-country to see the niggers, and perchance have a slap at a hippopotamus. I'll line your pockets, so that you won't lack the sinews of war, without which travel either at home or abroad is but sorry work, and I shall only expect you to give a good account of ship and cargo on your return.—Come, is ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... Ye needn't repeat it—'Liza ... Adams—'s if I'd mentioned a hippopotamus. I git out of patience with ye. I b'lieve in my heart ye think ye ought to git a wife that'd look ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... indifferent nor haughty nor any of the things people who disliked her usually found her and sometimes even a little made him believe her. The spirit of mirth in some cold natures manifests itself not altogether happily, their effort of recreation resembles too much the bath of the hippopotamus; but when Mrs. Dallow put her elbows on the table one felt she could be trusted to get ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... swung himself fiercely on his branch, and bumped against the hippopotamus, knocking him off from the tree. The ground underneath was chocolate, and it was soft and sticky, not having dried since the last rain. So when the hippopotamus fell he sank half way into the ground, and his beautiful brown color was spattered ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... started again. The canoes were hauled by the aid of the soldiers over the slight rapids which divided the river into pools in the dry season. Throughout the night the misty forest and swamp slipped by to the perpetual rhythm of the paddles. About the hour of the monkey a hippopotamus charged the flotilla and upset two boats. Zu Pfeiffer forbade any shooting, nor would he permit the expedition a moment's delay to pick up the occupants. Just as they heard the distant crowing of cocks from the village for which they were bound, four paddlers collapsed. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... He lives in the Nile with little eyes, He eats the hippopotamus too, And if he could ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... he turned to the left toward the shady Mall. The narrow walk he chose was filled to-day with people, who, having fed the elephant, admired the diving of the seal, wondered at the inconceivable ugliness of the hippopotamus, watched the chimpanzee tie knots in the strands of an untwisted rope by using her four deft hands, and shuddered a little at the young alligators, were now moving away—a confused mass of children, eager to spend their nickels for a ride at the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... is suggested by an interesting piece of evidence that has recently been obtained. A prehistoric flint knife, with a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus, has been purchased lately by the Louvre,(1) and is said to have been found at Gebel el-'Arak near Naga' Hamadi, which lies on the Nile not far below Koptos, where an ancient caravan-track leads by Wadi Hammamat to the Red Sea. On one side ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... the air as if the laws of gravitation no longer existed. But, best of all, was the grand conglomeration of animals where the giraffe appears to stand on the elephant's back, the zebra to be jumping over the seal, the hippopotamus to be lunching off a couple of crocodiles, and lions and tigers to be raining down in all directions with their mouths, wide open and their tails as stiff as that of ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... that at all," declared Elmer, hastily; "and if you take the trouble to look yonder, before your eyes begin to close up, you'll see what hit you, running away like a scared hippopotamus." ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... along we struck on the rocks. An hippopotamus rose near us, and had nearly overset the canoe; we fired on the animal and drove it away. After a great deal of trouble we got off the canoe without any material danger. We came to an anchor before Kaffo, ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... Half hippopotamus, half seal, yet in no way related to either, something between a pachyderm and cetacean, the dugong is a herbivorous marine mammal, commonly known as "the sea cow," because of its resemblance in some particulars to ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... summer and winter, I fought, hunted, was native to all the world's savage regions in turn, partook gleefully of strange and barbarous customs, naked and skin-painted. I pushed dug-outs and canoes along tropic water-ways where at any moment an enraged hippopotamus might thrust up his snout and overturn me, crunching the boat in two and leaving me a prey to crocodiles ... I killed birds of paradise with poison darts which I blew out of a reed with my nostrils ... I burned the houses of white settlers ... even ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... of meat, masses of dried flesh, and various kinds of game, large whips—termed sjamboks (pronounced shamboks)— made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide, leopard and lion skins, ostrich eggs and feathers, dried fruit, strings of onions, and other miscellaneous objects; on the floor stood a large deal table, and chairs of the same description—all home-made,—two waggon chests, a giant churn, a large iron pot, several wooden pitchers ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... Tom being a little astern. We were just rounding a point where the water was somewhat shallow, when I heard a cry from the canoe astern. Upon looking round, I saw it lifted high in the air, and turned bottom upwards, while beneath it appeared a huge hippopotamus, which was making after one of the men; another man was on the point of being pitched on the creature's back, the two blacks, with their legs in the air, were falling into the water, and one of the men, who seemed to have sprung on shore, ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... there is no knowing whether drink would not render him quite furious, and ten times more unmanageable than ever. No, take my word for it, Mr. Nabbum, that I know Huggermugger too well to attempt any of your tricks with him. You cannot catch him as you would an elephant or a hippopotamus. Be guided by me, and see if my plan don't succeed ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch

... driving and riding. There was a North American buffalo of immense size; also an elephant from Africa, and one from Asia; beside these, a prodigious number of gazelles, deer, cats, and dogs; skeletons of a hippopotamus and an elephant; and lastly the fossil bones of a mammoth. You know that the mammoth is no longer found living, and that the remains hitherto discovered lead to the belief that it was a species of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... have acquired, before the close of the tertiary period, the characters which essentially distinguish their existing faunas. The Eastern Continent had then, as now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; South America, its armadillos, sloths, and anteaters; Australia, a crowd of marsupials; and the very strange birds of New Zealand ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... your pyjamas. She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes, and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... expectation, that some commentators have rendered behemoth and leviathan, the elephant and whale, though the descriptions in our author will not admit of it; but Moses being, as we may well suppose, under an immediate terror of the hippopotamus and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is very accountable why he should permit ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... inches above the ground. Fatty was at least ten inches thick and I thought I was safe. But he didn't try to crawl under the floor after me. He went inside the shed and found that the boards of the floor sank beneath his weight like spring boards. And there that human hippopotamus stood jumping up and down while he mashed me into the mud like a mole under a pile-driver. I had showed that I had "a head on me like a nail" when I crawled under that floor and let Fatty step on me. There is a saying, "You can't keep a good man down." But Fatty kept me down, ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... "This is the hippopotamus, gentlemen," said Phipps, "fresh from his native woods. He sleeps underneath the banyan-tree, and lives on the nuts of the hick-o-ree, and pursues his prey with his tail extended upward and one eye open, and has been known when excited by hunger to eat small boys, spitting out their boots with great ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... and he began to sing the Scout's Song: 'Ingonyama' (He is a lion); and Dick responded with the 'Invooboo' chorus (Yes; he is better than that: he is a hippopotamus). ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... battle of Actium, in commemoration of his having discovered the position of Anthony through the means of an ass-driver. 7th. The Wolf suckling the Twins of Rome. 8th. The gladiator in combat with a lion. 9th. The Hippopotamus. 10th. The Sphinxes. 11th. An Eagle fighting with a Serpent. 12th. A beautiful statue of Helen. 13th. A group, with a monster somewhat resembling a bull, engaged in deadly conflict with a serpent; and many other works of art, too ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... did she live near Oxford?" If there is anything worse than an unimaginative man trying to write imaginatively, it is a heavy man when he fancies he is being facetious. He tramples out the last spark of cheerfulness with the broad damp foot of a hippopotamus. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... Mixed with remains of fire and human implements and human bones were to be seen not only bones of the hairy mammoth and cave-bear, woolly rhinoceros and reindeer, which could have been deposited there only in a time of arctic cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus, saber-toothed tiger, and the like, which could have been deposited only when the climate was torrid. The conjunction of these remains clearly showed that man had lived in England early enough and long enough to pass through times of arctic ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... never thought enough about evolution to know whether I believed in it and woman's suffrage, but I do now! I know that millions of years ago a great, big, distinguished hippopotamus stepped out of the woods and frightened one of my foremothers so that she turned tail and fled through a thicket that almost tore her limb from limb, right into the arms of her own mate. That's what I did! I caught that blue satin belt together ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... ugly? Second, is it necessary for gas works to be so odourwhifferous that the smell of the Automobile is a dream of fragrant beauty alongside of it? To both these questions the answer was plain. Of course it ain't. Beauty can be applied to the lines of a gas-tank just as readily as to the lines of a hippopotamus, and as for the odours, they are due to the fact that gas as it is now made does not smell pleasantly, but there is no reason why it should not be so manufactured that people would be willing to use it on their handkerchiefs. I ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of violence, because it is said to kill its father and to ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A fish, 5. A hippopotamus: ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... pounds, were to be awarded in sums of 10l. and 5l., and sometimes in the shape of silver cups, on what principle I am not quite clear; but the decision was to rest with a jury of three medical men and two "matrons." If simple adiposity, or the approximation of the human form divine to that of the hippopotamus, be the standard of excellence, there could be no doubt that a young gentleman named Thomas Chaloner, numbered 48 in the correct card, aged eight months, and weighing 33lbs., would be facile princeps, a prognostication of mine subsequently justified by the event. I must confess to looking ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... Europe. In the Pleistocene age there existed in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and fishers, closely allied to the Esquimaux. Man was contemporary with the cave bear, the cave lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the mammoth. Caves that have been examined in France or elsewhere have furnished for the stone age, axes, knives, lance and arrow points, scrapers, hammers. The change from what has been termed the chipped, to ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... after all, is it not strange, that as to almost all the lakes in Scotland, both Lowland and Highland, such a belief should prevail? and that the description popularly given {p.092} uniformly corresponds with that of the hippopotamus? Is it possible, that at some remote period, that remarkable animal, like some others which have now disappeared, may have been an inhabitant of our large lakes? Certainly the vanishing of the mammoth and other animals from the face of the creation renders such a conjecture less wild than I would ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... inland tribes filled Mary with the desire to explore other parts of the country. Often in the mission boat or in a canoe she traveled to villages farther away. On one trip the canoe in which Mary was riding was attacked by a hippopotamus. Mary thought her end had come. Nevertheless, she bravely fought off the animal, using metal cooking pots ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann

... lady, who thinks herself so witty and so sensitive, has an inner skin like a hippopotamus; she is covered with a magnificent egoism, which must be at least of galvanized steel. Her armour protects her against the action of other ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... and the Tallegalla or mound-raising birds, those wondrous denizens of the Australian wilderness, may now be seen in the Regent's Park for the first time in this hemisphere. For the first time, also, the wart hog of Africa there roots, and the hippopotamus displays his quaint gambols; and that "fairest animal," the giraffe, is now beheld in health and vigor, a naturalized inhabitant of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... of a few hours' duration, but extended over mayhap millenniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyaena; for familiar animals such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which connected their times with our own; and so I have been compelled to hold, that the days of creation were not natural, but prophetic days, and stretched ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... who, within a reasonable time, would trench a farm. Indeed, in his power to obey the primal command to "subdue the earth," my man, Abraham, is a hero—although, I imagine, he scarcely knows what the word means and would as soon think of himself as a hippopotamus. His fortunes would often seem as dark as himself to those who "take thought for the morrow;" and that is saying much, for Abraham is "colored" as far as ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... Martin's. The 'Behemoth' of Job is beyond a doubt neither whale nor devil, but, I think, the hippopotamus; who is indeed as ugly as the devil, and will occasionally play the devil among the rice-grounds; but though in this respect a devil of a fellow, yet on the whole he is too honest a monster to be a fellow of devils. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of the Balance is in the charge of Anpu. Behind Anpu are Thoth the scribe of the gods, and the monster Amemit, with the head of a crocodile, the forepaws and shoulders of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus; the duty of the last-named was to eat up the hearts that were light in the balance. On the other side of the Balance Ani, accompanied by his wife, is seen standing with head bent low in adoration, and between him and the Balance stand the two goddesses who ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge

... business. He says every day will have its excitement. Tomorrow they are going to extract a tooth from the boa-constrictor, and pa and I are going to help hold him, while the animal dentist pulls the tooth, and then we scrub the rhinoceros, and oil the hippopotamus, and get everything ready to start out on the road, and I can't write any more in my diary until after we fix the snake. Gee, but he is ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... the best of these without spoiling them, so I will endeavor to give a few examples of the less forceful. If, for instance, Kameel wanted to indicate size, importance, force, or greatness as an attribute of anything whatever from a flash of lightning to a hippopotamus or an attack of fever he would say "Helovabigwaan," using that term as an adjective. To express disapproval or disgust, he would exclaim "Toodamaach," and shake his head emphatically. The first time I ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... standing or walking all the while, we find that the feet are shod with hoofs instead of being tipped with claws. First the five toes, though clubbed together, have each a separate hoof, as in the elephant; then the hippopotamus follows with four toes, and the rhinoceros with practically three. These beasts are all clodhoppers, and their feet are hobnailed boots. The more active deer and all cattle keep only two toes for practical purposes, though stumps of two more remain. Finally, the horse gathers all ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... splendid tigers, David says; and an elephant, and a hippopotamus; and ever so many other creatures besides. All of them splendid, ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... see,—from men of attractively imperfect sympathies. Nordau, working himself into a mighty wrath because mystery is left out of his soul, gathering adjectives about his loins, stalks this little fluttered modern world, puts his huge, fumbling, hippopotamus hoof upon the Blessed Damozel, goes crashing through the press. He is greeted with a shudder of delight. Even Matthew Arnold, a man who had a way of seeing things almost, sometimes, criticises Emerson for lack of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... rushes wave, twisted together by the twining morning-glory vines; far up where the alligators make great nests in the river-bank, and lay their eggs, and stretch themselves in the sunshine, half asleep inside their scaly armor; far up where the hippopotamus is standing in his drowsy dream on the bottom of the river, with the water covering him, head and all. He is a great, sleepy fellow, not unlike a very large, dark-brown pig, with a thick skin and no hair. Here he lives under the water all day, only once in a while poking up his nose for ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews

... peixe boy by the Brazilians, and manati in the West Indies. It has no bovine feature except in its upper lip. The head and skin remind one of a large seal. In many respects it may be likened to a hippopotamus without tusks or legs. It has a semicircular flat tail, and behind the head are two oval fins, beneath which are the breasts, which yield a white milk. The flesh resembles pork, with a disagreeable, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... horns, and none had the characteristic forked tail. This member, on the contrary, is a tassel of straight wiry hair, reaching nearly to the ground—a surprising sight. Lower still I came upon the mastodon, the lion, the tiger, hippopotamus and alligator, all differing very little from those infesting Central Europe, as described in my ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... primigenius, whose bones are common in certain Cambridge gravels, whose teeth are brought up by dredgers, far out in the German Ocean, off certain parts of the Norfolk coast. With them wandered the woolly rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus), the hippopotamus, the lion—not (according to some) to be distinguished from the recent lion of Africa—the hyaena, the bear, the horse, the reindeer, and the musk ox; the great Irish elk, whose vast horns are so well known in every museum of northern Europe; and that ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... acquiescence in things as they are. The elephant stands first as a soothing influence, and then the giraffe, the latter having special powers, due to its beautiful eyes and agreeable perfume. Sometimes the hippopotamus may diffuse a charm of his own, an aura of rotund obesity, especially when he is bathing or sleeping; but there are moments when one has to flee from his presence. I never could get on very well with rhinoceroses, but the large deer, bison, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... me in a state of nudity, armed with a poisoned spear, and guarded by the skin of a hippopotamus, formed into a shield. In this country, the animal called man is fine, although his wants are few,—some rice, a calabash of palm wine, and the fish he himself spears. Are his ancestors the creators of the adjoining temple, covered with beautiful sculptures, and supported by colossal ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... bulk of the shaggy arctic elephant, engraved in firm lines on a fragment of its tusk,—man still remains. Man was present when rhinoceros and elephant were as common in Britain as they are to-day in Southern India or Borneo; when the hippopotamus was as much at home in the waters of the Thames as in the Nile and Niger; when huge bears like the grizzly of the Rockies, cave-lions and sabre-toothed tigers lurked in Devon caverns or chased the bison over ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... Rae, greater than he, could safely pass down the dim river running through that world: could pass in his golden sun-boat, guided by magic words of Thoth instead of oars or sails; and the guardian hippopotamus (whom Greeks turned into the dog Cerberus) dared not ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Jesuits throughout England were toward each other in a state of armed neutrality, which wanted but little at any moment to become open war, as it did in James the First's time, when those meek missionaries, by their gentle moral tortures, literally hunted to death the poor Popish bishop of Hippopotamus (that is to say, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... contemplated the fare awaiting discussion, and to which a boar's head grinned a welcome. Snails from France, oysters torn from trees, gazelle cutlets, stewed iguana, smoked elephant, fried locusts, manati-breasts, hippopotamus steaks, boiled alligator, roasted crocodile eggs, monkeys on toast, land crabs and Africa soles, carp, and mullet—detestable in themselves, but triumphant proof of the skill of the cook—furnished forth the festival-table, in ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... Bugge, is a hippopotamus; a walrus, says Ten Brink. But that water-goblin who covers the space from Old Nick of jest to the Neckan and Nix of poetry and tale, is all one needs, and Nicor is a good ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... reply, but his voice sounded hollow and indistinct. Then I looked up again, and saw that it was the head of a hippopotamus, not that of an elephant, which was looking down at me. Curiously enough, I felt little or no surprise at this, and when in the course of a few minutes I observed a pair of horns growing out of the creature's eyes and a bushy tail standing erect on the apex of its head, I ceased to be ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... of obviously intentional transposition occurs in chap. xl. where two verses are introduced as one of Job's replies to God, so as to allow of the latter delivering a second speech and utilising therein a fine description of the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Lastly, it needs little critical acumen to perceive that the scraps of dialogue attributed to Jahveh in the Hebrew text and Authorised Version are, in so far as they can claim to be regarded as authentic, ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... with its burning, shining face, would be a mere blank, an endless waste to him. Persons of this class have no more to say to a matter of fact staring them in the face, without a label in its mouth, than they would to a hippopotamus."... ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... hippopotamus has also been observed, at the Zoological Gardens, to scatter his dung in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... himself moving with the slow stream of vehicles on the Avenue, and with Mrs. Billy gazing at him quizzically and asking him if he did not feel like a hippopotamus in a frog-pond. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... fowl for dinner," said Judy, in a half-choked voice. "Oh, Esther, why couldn't you have had cow, or horse, or hippopotamus—anything ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... has detected about thirty remains of species of extinct mammalia. Many of these belonged to animals such as the hippopotamus, rhinoceros, tapir, etc. One extinct animal, called the Oreodon, had grinding teeth like lions, cats, etc., and must have belonged to a race that lived on vegetables and flesh, and yet chewed the cud like a cow. Another called the Machairodus, ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... the pachydermatous Lophrodon, that gigantic tapir, which concealed itself behind rocks, ready to do battle for its prey with the Anoplotherium, a singular animal partaking of the nature of the rhinoceros, the horse, the hippopotamus and the camel. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... least waies let vs take example of brute beastes. For it oughte not to greue vs to learne of th[em] a thynge y^t shall be so profitable, of whome mkinde now long ago hath lerned so many fruitful things: sence a beast called Hippopotamus hath shewed y^e cutting of veines, & a bird of egipt called Ibis hath shewed y^e vse of a clister, which y^e phisicis gretly alow. The hearbe called dictamum whiche is good to drawe out arrowes, we haue knowne it bi hartes. Thei also haue taughte vs that the eatinge ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus

... confused childish desire for information, was just ready to ask why this sycamore looked so morose, when the door opened and M. Batifol appeared. The master of the school had a severe aspect, in spite of his almost indecorous name. He resembled a hippopotamus clothed in an ample black coat. He entered slowly and bowed in a dignified way to M. Violette, then seated himself in a leather armchair before his papers, and, taking off his velvet skull-cap, revealed such a voluminous round, yellow baldness that little Amedee compared ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... of medicine, Burton was not able to compound, so after staying two days he took his leave. "It made me sad," says Burton, "to see the wistful, lingering look with which the poor old king accompanied the word Kuahery! (Farewell!)" On the return journey Speke shot a hippopotamus which he presented to the natives, who promptly ate it. By the time Pangany was again reached both travellers were in a high fever; but regarding it simply as a seasoning, they felt gratified rather than not. When the Zanzibar boat arrived Speke was well enough to walk to the shore, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... paused for a moment. "I know an old hippopotamus in a certain African river who has twice upset me. I want to go back and ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... passage clear; But what must now mine eyes behold! Are nature's laws suspended here? Real is it, or a phantom show? In length and breadth how doth my poodle grow! He lifts himself with threat'ning mien, In likeness of a dog no longer seen! What spectre have I harbor'd thus! Huge as a hippopotamus, With fiery eye, terrific tooth! Ah! now I know thee, sure enough! For such a base, half-hellish brood, The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... attention to the fact that, when the hippopotamus is almost completely submerged, the pointed ears, prominent eyes, and large nostrils are grotesquely suggestive of a horse's head. This I have ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... and set. She looked down at her hands, and clasped them in her lap, then up at him. "In that case, you can forsake the strenuous life with a free conscience. You need never climb another mountain, or wrestle with another—er—hippopotamus. That little girl in the red cap ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... physicist's or the geologist's estimate of the age of our planet) Britain was not yet an island. Neither the Channel nor the North Sea as yet cut it off from the Continent when those primaeval savages herded beside the banks of its streams, along with elephant and hippopotamus, bison and elk, bear and hyaena; amid whose remains we find their roughly-chipped flint axes and arrow-heads, the fire-marked stones which they used in boiling their water, and the sawn or broken bases of the antlers which for some unknown purpose[6] ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... nothing special, more than that he was a pure negro, with enormously thick lips, flattened nose, long protruding heels, teeth white as hippopotamus ivory, and almost always set in a good-humored grin. The darkey had been a sailor, or rather ship-steward, before landing in Peru. Thither had he strayed, and settled at Cerro Pasco after several years spent aboard ship. He was a native of Mozambique, on the eastern coast of Africa, to which ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... glad I stayed," thought Oddo. "Now I can say I have seen Nipen. It is much less terrible than I expected. Grandfather told me that it sometimes came like an enormous elephant or hippopotamus; and never smaller than a large bear. But this is no bigger than—let me see—I think it is most like a fox. I should like to make it speak to me. They would think so much of me at home, if ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... consolation, some pleasant Latin sentences over the doors of the various departments, celebrating the solace and delights of learning. This was seeing the College, literally; but it was a good deal like seeing the lion's den, the lion himself being absent on leave,—or like visiting the hippopotamus in Regent's Park on those days in which he remains steadfastly buried in his tank, and will show only the tip of a nostril for your entrance-fee. Still, it was a pleasure to know that learning was so handsomely housed; and as for the little rabble who could not be trusted in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... your hearts rejoice, O gods of heaven, Let your hearts rejoice, O ye gods who dwell on the earth. The Young Horus cometh in peace. On his way he hath made manifest deeds of valour, according to the Book of slaying the Hippopotamus." And from that day they made ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... Sir Henry, as we sat down, having first lit a lamp of the sort used by the Kukuanas, of which the wick is made from the fibre of a species of palm leaf, and the oil from clarified hippopotamus fat, "well, I feel uncommonly inclined ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... earth were found the bones of fox, badger, brown bear, grizzly bear, reindeer, red deer, horse, pig, and goat, and some bones evidently hacked by man. In the lower cave earth there were the remains of the hyena, fox, brown and grizzly bears, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, urus, bison, and red deer, the hacked bones of a goat, and a small leg-bone of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... the deplorable breaches of etiquette on the part of visitors at the Zoo. We ourselves have heard the most uncomplimentary allusions made to the appearance of the baboons and the hippopotamus, in the hearing of those unfortunate creatures, and quite regardless of their amour propre. The callous Cockney takes care to insult his helpless victims only when they are behind bars and cannot retaliate effectively. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... got better and better, went out with Mr Cupples in the gig, ate like an ogre, drank like a hippopotamus, and was rapidly recovering his former strength. As he grew better, his former grief did draw nearer, but such was the freshness of his new life, that he seemed to have died and risen again like Lazarus, leaving his sorrow behind ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... see how it is!" exclaimed the Knight-mare, tossing his long black mane. "Nobody's got any sympathy for me. How would you like it? Suppose you were a little girl only as far as your shoulders and all the rest of you hippopotamus, eh?" ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... old, old one of the old woman who saw a hippopotamus for the first time. She looked at him a moment in silence and then ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... oranges when there were apples? What was a rice swamp compared with a corn field? Think of the immeasurable superiority, as a steady thing, of an Irish potato to a banana, or a peach to a pineapple! What was a Chinese pony alongside a Kentucky horse, or a water buffalo with the belly of a hippopotamus and horns crooked as a saber and long as your arm to one who had seen old-fashioned cows, and bulls whose bellowing was as the roaring of lions? The miserable but mighty buffaloes were slower than oxen and, horns and all, tame as sheep—the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... is manifestly impossible that forms of life suited to one of these climates could have survived during the other, we can here perceive a further and most potent cause interfering with the test of geographical distribution as indiscriminately applied in all cases. When the elephant and hippopotamus were flourishing in England amid the luxuriant vegetation which these large animals require, it is evident that scarcely any one species of either the fauna or the flora of this country can have been the same as it was when its African climate gave place to that of Greenland. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... I do not think so. The pure hypocrite is much rarer than shallow people think, and, in any case, there was no inducement to make a display in my presence. What influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great female? A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators. Of course you may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it on at other times. This is plausible, but I suspect that such ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... "Now if only a hippopotamus could fly up in the air out of that bush, or you preserved flying elephants on the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... told me that before, and you said it was so hard to know what to say if you didn't know a rhinoceros from a hippopotamus. And now you find ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... then, that this took place. On the others he frequently went down from the raised section to the bottom of the circle and slaughtered all the tame animals that he approached, some of them also being led to him or brought before him in nets. He also killed a tiger, a hippopotamus, and an elephant. After accomplishing this, he retired, but at the conclusion of breakfast fought again as a gladiator. The form of fighting which he practiced and the armor which he used was that pertaining to the so-called secutor: in his right hand he held the shield ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... bushbucks, the inyala, the water tragelaph (Limnotragus selousi), the kudu and Livingstone's eland. The only buffalo is the common Cape species. The hyaena is the spotted kind. The hunting dog is present. There are some seven species of monkeys, including two baboons and one colobus. The hippopotamus is found in the lakes and rivers, and all these sheets of water are infested with crocodiles, apparently belonging to but one ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... taught me the letter A. The boeuf, the ox, stood for B; the canard, the duck, told me about C; the dindon, the turkey, gave me the letter D. And so on with the rest. A few compartments, it is true, were lacking in clearness. I had no friendly feeling for the hippopotamus, the kamichi, or horned screamer, and the zebu, who aimed at making me say H, K and Z. Those outlandish beasts, which failed to give the abstract letter the support of a recognized reality, caused me to hesitate for a time over their recalcitrant consonants. No matter: ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... he vanished entirely from view. Then his head emerged, and it could be seen that he was swimming furiously to keep afloat. Somehow his awkward movements made Bob Archer think of a hippopotamus he had once ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... understand just why this peculiar aversion should always be held against the unoffending ape tribe. Why it would not be quite as satisfactory to find one's ancestor in an ape as in the alternative lines of, for example, the cow, or the hippopotamus, or the whale, or the dog has always been a mystery. Yet the fact of this prejudice holds. Probably we dislike the ape because of the very patency of his human affinities. The poor relation is objectionable not so much because ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... hat with brief ceremoniousness, and then as the carriage rolled away addressed the Reverend Mr. Leveson, who was throwing himself with hippopotamus-like agility across ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... of goats. There is a battle of the mice and cats, and the king of the mice, in his chariot drawn by two dogs, is seen attacking the fortress of the cats. A picture which is worthy of Edward Lear shows a ridiculous hippopotamus seated amidst the foliage of a tree, eating from a table, whilst a crow mounts a ladder to wait upon him. There are caricatures showing women of fashion rouging their faces, unshaven and really amusing old tramps, and so ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Jerusalem, the General of the Parths, the Negus of Abyssinia and the Emperor of Calicut. He fought against Scandinavians covered with fish-scales, against negroes mounted on red asses and armed with shields made of hippopotamus hide, against gold-coloured Indians who wielded great, shining swords above their heads. He conquered the Troglodytes and the cannibals. He travelled through regions so torrid that the heat of the sun would set fire to the hair on one's head; he journeyed through countries so glacial that one's ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... Hebrew word meaning "great beast." It was used probably of the hippopotamus. See Job, xl, 15-24. In the work by Bergmann, which furnished De Quincey with much of his material, the figure used is that of a giant and a dwarf.—Muscovy. An old name of ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... Ugliness is not mere absence of beauty, but absence of it where it ought to be present. It comes always from a disappointed expectation,—as where the lineaments that do not disgust in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus, whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight. It is bad taste that we suffer from,—not plainness, not indifference to appearance, but features misplaced, shallow mimicry of "effects" where their causes do not exist, transparent pretences of all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... revisited the Zoological Gardens, and found that two old friends had got—the one, a companion, the other, a neighbour. The latter was the bulky hippopotamus, now most bearish, and more and more unmistakably showing the minute accuracy of those master lines in the Book of Job, in which Behemoth's portrait, pose, and character are depicted. The former was the subject ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... were spherical and barrel-shaped, of carnelian, haematite, and amethyst, and discs of shell, these last the commonest of all. In green felspar there were small flat discs, hawks, and hippopotamus heads. Sphinxes with human heads are generally of amethyst. Uninscribed scarabs, in carnelian, amethyst, and jasper, ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... importance of combining self-improvement with all my recreations, I had been in the morning to the Zoo, where I had eaten buns with the elephant, cracked jokes and nuts with the monkeys, prodded the hippopotamus, got a rise out of the grizzly, made the lions roar, had a row with the chimpanzee, and ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... A picture is given in the book of one appendage to the dress "which the weaver considered an infallible charm against poison." Others are "considered as protection against the effects of thunder and lightning, against the attacks of the alligator, the hippopotamus, snakes, lions, tigers," etc., etc. Winstanley relates ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement. It was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... crossly, and speaking as distinctly as he could for his mouthful, and bolting a rabbit and a hippopotamus together; "an' I'm goin' to ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... hippopotamus," said the dragoman; and the tourists all tittered, for there was just a suspicion of Mr. Stuart himself in ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... such a nice place to visit in winter as it is in summer, but the children enjoyed it, and they spent some time in the elephant house, watching the big animals. There was also a hippopotamus there, and oh! what a big mouth he had. The keeper went in between the bars of the hippo's cage, with a pail full ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope

... small tusks of the elephant, clashed brazen cymbals and beat gilded drums. These advanced a little way up the hall and stood there playing, while after them marched a bodyguard of twenty gigantic Nubian soldiers who carried broad-bladed spears with shields of hippopotamus hide curiously worked, and were clothed in tunics and caps ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... constrictor. Likewise the tail of one. Here we come to a change of scene. Mark how wonderfully a few strokes of dark-green paint, put on by the hand of genius, impart the idea of a pestiferous swamp. That odd-looking object, like a rock, is the head of a hippopotamus. A few feet beyond, you notice two things like the stumps of aquatic weeds. Those are the tails of two hippopotamuses engaged in deadly strife at the bottom of the swamp. The heads of crocodiles are thrust up here ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... liberal views and unquestioned bravery of his contemporary, adopted something like his peculiarities of style and domesticated foreign idioms, that yet, like tamed tigers, are not to be relied on in general society. As Carlyle was the rhinoceros of English, Emerson aspired to be its hippopotamus,—both pachyderms, and impenetrable to the bullets ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various



Words linked to "Hippopotamus" :   artiodactyl mammal, artiodactyl, even-toed ungulate, hippo, genus Hippopotamus



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