470 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1891. 



skin thickly spotted with brown spots ; the hair is quite short, and 

 there is a slight ridge of hair on the neck and withers. The tail is 

 not bushy like that of the striped hysena. He is a great nuisance, as 

 you cannot tie out for lions without sitting up over the animal yourself, 

 the hyeenas being pretty sure to kill and eat the gara. They are 

 said to be cowardly, and no doubt would not dream of attacking a man, 

 but they are bold enough to attack and kill sheep when out grazing 

 in the daytime, and at night time will kill cattle or donkeys that are 

 left out. I was told they will also take a mouthful out of a sleeping 

 man. If you are sitting alongside a kill at night, the spotted hyaena 

 appears at sunset, and sometimes before, and eats away within a 

 couple of yards of you (of course you are concealed in a bush or 

 behind a zereba of thorns) but after you have thrown stones at 

 him and he knows you are there, he will return again. They 

 make a great variety of noises, from a deep growl to a loud 

 discordant howling, which it is impossible to describe. Should a 

 lion come to the kill the hyaenas retreat for a short distance, 

 but if the lion, as he often does, stops in a neighbouring bush, the 

 hyaenas come up again, you then hear a tremendous scurry as the 

 lion chases them off the kill. The hyaenas don't appear to be afraid 

 of a dead lion, as one night when I shot a lioness two hyaenas came, 

 one laid hold of it by the hind leg and the other by the root of the 

 tail, and dragged it away 20 yards before I knew what they were 

 doing, and would no doubt have eaten it, if I had not gone to the 

 rescue. If your camp is not within a good zereba of thorns,. these 

 brutes will come through the hedge and carry off anything at all eatable. 

 One night a hyaena carried off from close to my bedhead a leather water 

 chagul, which I should think could not have been very nutritious. In 

 the daytime also they are sometimes seen loafing about, especially if 

 there is a kill. The animal has the drooping quarters and slouching 

 gait of the hyaena. The anatom}^ of this hyaena is unique ; it being im- 

 possible from external examination to tell the male from- the female, a 

 circumstance which led to the belief among the ancients that this animal 

 wasbisexualinits nature. This belief, according to Burton in his " First 

 Footprints in Eastern Africa," still exists among the Somalis. He says : 

 ' The Somal declare the waraba to be a hermaphrodite, so the an- 

 cients supposed the hyaena to be of both sexes." I regret that my 



