MAMMALIA OF SOMALI LAND. 471 



knowledge of the Somali language was too limited to enable me to 

 find out for myself whether this is so. According to other authorities, 

 this belief also exists in other puts of Africa. A very complete 

 account of the anatomy of the spotted hyaena is given in papers pub- 

 lished in the volumes of the P. Z. S. of London in the years 1877, 

 1878 and 1870, to which those interested in the subject may refer, 

 and I may mention that in those papers quotations will be found on 

 the same subject from Herodotus, Pliny and iElian. 



Hycena .striata. 

 This is the same as the Indian hyaena, though the one I shot was 

 very much better clothed with hair than the hyaenas one sees in 

 the hot weather out here. The hair on the body of the female 

 I killed, for half the length of the body behind the shoulder, was 

 quite 9 inches long, and the rest of the animal was very hairy and 

 it had a fine bushy tail, as will be seen from the photograph I now 

 exhibit. The colour also seemed to be much clearer and brighter than 

 that of the Indian hyaena. This hyaena is not nearly so common as 

 the spotted hyaena. It does not attack the flocks, and is looked on by 

 the Somal as harmless, One during the daytime laboriously dug a 

 deep hole in the ground in its efforts to get at a carcase I had covered 

 with thorn bushes. 



Fells leo. 



The Lion is so well known that any detailed description of him 

 is quite unnecessary; a very good account of his ways is given in Mr. 

 Selous' book/' A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa," The lion in its 

 wild state does not grow so luxuriant a mane as adorns the menagerie 

 lion, but at the same time some of the old lions in Somali Land 

 have very handsome manes. I think, without exception, all the old 

 lions • in that country have black manes, the yellow maned ones 

 being younger lions ; that is the opinion, at all events, of the Somalis. 



I never saw a lion with a line of long hair running along the belly 

 as one sees in a menagerie lion, and I see that Mr. Selous says he 

 never saw a wild lion with that fringe of hair. On the other hand, in 

 Harris's "Wild Sports of Africa" the lion is pictured and described as 

 having that ornament. There is a tuft of long hair on the elbow of 

 the Somali lion. Most naturalists are agreed that there is only one 



