Though the Hippopotamus has been celebrated from the earliest ages; though mentioned in the sacred writings under the name of _behemoth_, and though his figure is engraved upon the obelisks of Egypt, and on the Roman medals; yet he was but imperfectly known to the ancients. Aristotle scarcely mentions him, and in the little he does say, there are more errors than facts. Pliny copied Aristotle, and far from correcting, adds to the number of his errors. It was only towards the middle of the sixteenth century that we had any precise information concerning this animal; Belon being then at Constantinople, saw a living one; of which, however, he has given but an imperfect representation, for the two figures which he has joined to his description, were not taken from the hippopotamus he has seen, but were copied from the reverse of a medal of the Emperor Adrian, and from the colossus of the Nile at Rome; so that we must carry the epoch of the knowledge of this animal to the year 1603, when Frederico Zerenghi, a surgeon of Narni, in Italy, printed at Naples, the history of two of these animals, which he had killed in Egypt, in a great ditch he had caused to be dug in the environs of the Nile, near Damietta. This little work was written in Italian, and appears to have been neglected by his contemporary and succeeding naturalists; notwithstanding, it is the only good and original one on the subject, and has so strong pretensions to credit, that I shall here give an extract and translation from it.