68 DESULTORY SKETCHES IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



were little, if at all, more distinct, and the dirty-white collar was 

 equally conspicuous."* 



This animal is the Straand- Wolf or Straand-Jut of the Cape 

 colonists, and is neither so common nor so generally diffused as the 

 Spotted Hyaenas ; but appears to extend further northward,t the spe- 

 cimen in the Zoological Society's Museum having been received from 

 near the Gambia. "It is well known," writes Mr. Steedman, " to 

 the farmers who reside along the southern shores near the Cape, 

 where it feeds upon carrion, and whatever is occasionally thrown up 

 by the ocean, as dead Whales, &c. But when food becomes scarce 

 it commits great depredations upon the flocks and herds of the colo- 

 nists, by whom its incursions are much dreaded. A very fine speci- 

 men" (described in the foregoing paragraph) " that had been just 

 shot by a farmer, had destroyed three large calves belonging to him. 

 I was informed that it is a remarkably cunning animal, retiring to a 

 considerable distance from the scene of its depredations to elude 

 pursuit, and concealing itself, during the day-time, in the mountains, 

 or in the thick bush, which extends in large patches throughout the 

 sandy district in which it is usually found. The cub I procured was 

 one of three obtained alive in the Nieuveld mountains, a considera- 

 ble distance in the interior of the country, which shews that this spe- 

 cies is not so strictly confined to the vicinity of the sea-coast as its 

 colonial name would apply, or as the accounts of travellers would 

 lead us to imagine." 



An instructive account of the Brown Hyaena, by Dr. Andrew Smith, 

 the enterprising African traveller, to whom zoology has recently 

 been so much indebted^ is published in the 15th volume of the Tran- 

 sactions of the Linna;an Society, where it is stated that "it seldom 

 attacks the larger quadrupeds, and it is only Sheep, Goats, and such 

 like animals, that suffer from its predatory nature.'* A captive in- 

 dividual which that naturalist long possessed, was always unusually ac- 

 tive during rain, and habitually avoided warmth : its disposition 

 was exceedingly cunning and distrustful, and it shewed an anxiety to 

 carry off things of all description to its place of retreat, which were 

 not without difficulty regained ; it thus concealed its food, and is 

 stated to have seized on bones in preference to flesh. Both this 



* Steedman's Wanderings in South Africa^ iL, 114. 



•f- Since penning the above, we have found a notice^in the Annates des Set- 

 jences Nahirelles, (torn, v., p. 227, new series), of the Spotted Hyaena being met 

 with in Senegal. Cuvier remarks, in his Ossemens Fossiles, that a figure of it 

 occurs in an ancient manuscript of Oppian. 



