70 DBSULTORY SKETCHES IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



spots and stripes, variously and irregularly placed. The body- 

 markings differ considerably in intensity in different individuals, and 

 we have seen one wherein the stripes were so much broken and 

 scattered as scarcely to deserve the name. 



This widely-diffused species about Mount Libanus, Syria, the 

 north of Asia, and in the vicinity of Algiers, is known, according 

 to Bruce, to feed mostly upon large succulent bulbs, as those of the 

 Fritillarias ; and that author informs us that he has known large 

 spaces of fields turned up by it to get at onions and other roots, 

 which are chosen with such care, that, after peeling them, all such 

 are rejected as are tinged with rottenness, as before noticed. Shaw, 

 the traveller, likewise asserts, that, in default of other food, it will 

 eat the roots of plants, and will feed on the tender shoots of palms. 

 He speaks of it as an unsociable animal, solitary, and inhabiting the 

 chasms of the rocks. In Abyssinia, and other hot climates, however, 

 the Striped Hyajna becomes much more carnivorous, and a perfect 

 pest from its abundance, which is induced, in some degree, by the 

 unclean habits of the inhabitants, who leave the Hysenas to per- 

 form the office of scavengers in removing a vast quantity of decay- 

 ing animal matter. So far they are indeed useful, but their 

 multiplication is thus obviously encouraged to a noxious extent ; for 

 they resort to the towns and villages in multitudes at dusk, destroy 

 every domestic animal to which they can gain access, and if they 

 do not habitually attack man, from whom they are rather disposed 

 to flee, still it is not exactly pleasant to hear them grunting all 

 around, to encounter them at every turn, or to be awoke, as the 

 traveller Bruce was on one occasion, by something moving under 

 his bed, to be greeted by the night- sparkling glare of the eyes of one 

 of these animals, trying to make off with his bunch of candles ! 

 We have never heard of either this or the Spotted Hyaena injuring 

 a grown human being under such circumstances, but infants are 

 particularly subject to be carried off by them. The statement that 

 the Striped Hyaena inhabits South Africa rests on the solitary testi- 

 mony of Levaillant, who appears to have met with it in the country 

 of the Great Namaquas, towards the tropic of Capricorn.* It cer- 

 tainly does not occur towards the Cape. 



We have next to describe a very singular little animal, the denti- 



• See the narrative of his second expedition, vol. iii., 68, English transla- 

 tion. He distinguishes all three species. 



