VIII. Mr. Nose Horn and Mr. River Horse
"How do you say them? And which is which?" That is what the very little boy asked about the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus when he came home from the London zoo. Their dreadful names made his head ache, and he couldn't tell them apart. He was sure children could have made up much better names for animals.
"Well, why is a dog a dog?"
"It isn't," said the very little boy; "it's a bow-wow." His papa laughed, for he was a very bright papa and saw the point. And then he told the very little boy that a great many things seemed to have been named, as a baby names a dog "bow-wow," by something about them that a child would notice first. Once upon a time, perhaps, a hunter in Africa or India, came upon two strange beasts. They both had enormous bodies on very short legs, and they both liked to wallow in ..the mud. When he went home he wanted to tell his friends about them so they would know the animals, too, if they ever saw them. One he called Mr. Nose Horn. That is, if he had been an Englishman, he would have said nose horn, but as he was a Greek, he said rhino-ceros, which means the same thing. The most striking things about the other animal was its huge horse-like face, and its habit of living most of the time and feeding in the water. So he called that animal hippo-pot-amus, two Greek words meaning river-horse.
No child could have made up simpler names than those. But, oh dear, when you come to study these queer animals it does seem that those wise old Greeks might have found better names. If they had thought of the shape of his body, his short legs, his rough, thick skin, of how he likes to wallow in a mud puddle and then go to sleep in the sun, of his four-hoofed toes, and of his sword tusks like those of wild boars in German forests, they would have called the hippopotamus the water-pig. And if those old Norsemen who used to roam over the northern seas in big row boats had seen the animal, these are the things they would have noticed: He can stay under water from five to eight minutes, he spouts when he comes up for air, his naked skin is oiled so he can slip through the water easily, and under that skin is a thick layer of solid fat. They would surely have thought the hippopotamus a land whale.
