The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-01-13 00:00:00

A YOUNG HIPPOPOTAMUS.

A gentleman sends the following interesting com-
munication to The Times :

Few of your readers care so little for natural history as
not to take an interest in the welfare of the hippopotamus
which was born at the Zoological Gardens about a a.m. on
Sunday last. So I oiler no apology for sending you an
authentic bulletin as to the present condition of mother and
child. I have this morning watched them attentively for ten

They have since the birth of the latter exhibited respec-
tively in a remarkable degree that instinct and that defect
of Instinct which it is very difficult to reconcile with each
other, ise it alao is to understand why Borne brutes whose
Instinct is marvellous— e g., the hound—never attain to that
which I may call common sense, but, so soon as instinct
fails, commit the most egregious blunders in the course of
their daily life without ever acquiring adequate knowledge
from experience.
Numerous instances of what I mean will readily occur to
you. The poor baby has not sucked since its birth though
some of the savants who have surrounded it at one time
thought otherwise), and I fear that to-morrow you will
announce its death. Your readers will remember that the
darn gave birth to a calf OD the 21st of February, Is7l, but
it had some organic complaint (I believe in the liver and
never sucked, and die•l ill less than 40 hours from the
time of its birth. On that occasion the female was very
restless and suspicious, and would not allow her child to go
out of her reach. At this, her second confinement, she has
allowed her I•aby to walk about her cage, which the calf has
done repeatedly. She has coaxed it, and has endeavoured
to induce it to suck, hut the poor little creature, while it has
tried hard at its mother's ears, mouth, and paws, has not
found its way to the right orifices, although they hang down
apparently frill •A milk. How strange is this partial, and,
thus far, helpless instinct'
• ,• • •

You know how devoted, how courageous, and how adroit
the en,P1,04 of the Zoological Society are. Yesterday they
made an attempt to get the little beast out of its cage, so as
to feed it by hand. 'Bravo Mr. Maw's feeding bottle !" your
lady readers will -exclaim. But, in order to get bajoy out
of tile cage, the keepers must first get mamma into the water.
go they pushed to the edge of the den, close to the pool, an
engine used for watering plants, and then pumped into the
water. Banglgoes the dans into the pond, furious with ex-
citement, but its an instant the little one splashes in
after her. And she then makes a rush at the bars of the
cage, and as only three ,d these bars are of wrought iron
none but brave fellows, as assuredly k Prescott (who was,
I believe, in charge of some part of the late Lord Derbys
menagerie, and who specially attends to the hippopotamus),
anti as, indeed, are all our keepers, would have exposed
themselves to so much risk for the sake of their employers
anrl. of natural history. . .

They failed, in spite of the most strenuous efforts, to get
the little thing out of the cage. This morning it was lying
very quiet under its dam's chest, occasionally twitching its
can, She had so arranged herself as to command with one
eye one of the doors leading into the cage, and with the
other eye the other door. It is satisfactory to feel that if
we must lose the little stranger, which would have greatly
Interested our indigenous Sad our foreign population
throughout the coming season, we shall not have lost it
through any mismanagement or want of care.