62 DESULTORY SKETCHES IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



been touchwood, and in a minute the whole was reduced to a mass 

 of splinters. The power of his jaws far exceeded any animal force 

 of the kind I ever saw exerted, and reminded me of nothing so much 

 as a miner's crushing mill, or the scissors with which they cut oiF 

 bars of iron or copper in the metal foundries."* 



The strength of Hyaenas, as manifested by their power of drag- 

 ging away large carcases, is strikingly exemplified in Col. Denham's 

 narrative. At Kouka, that traveller relates that the Striped Hy- 

 aenas CDhtibbaJ, which were everywhere in legions, became so 

 extremely ravenous that a large village had been attacked by them 

 the night before his last visit to it, and absolutely carried by storm, 

 notwithstanding defences nearly six feet high of branches of the 

 prickly tuUoh ; and two Donkeys, whose flesh these animals are, 

 according to that author, particularly fond of, were carried off, de- 

 spite the efforts of the people. " We constantly," continues Col. 

 Denham, " heard them close to the walls of our own town at nights, 

 and on a gate being left partly open they would enter, and carry off 

 any unfortunate animal that they could find in the streets."t A 

 single Striped Hyaena has been seen to make off with a negress, 

 holding her by one leg ; and running thus at a brisk pace, till she 

 was fortunately rescued. J 



The natural character of Hyaenas is, however, crafty in the ex- 

 treme, but not bold ; the slightest show of resistance sufficing gene- 

 rally to keep them aloof. It is only when unusually urged by 

 hunger that the Striped species derives a confidence from acting in 

 concert, doubtless the result of experience in some degree ; and the 

 solitary Spotted Hyaena, in all likelihood famished to desperation, 

 has been known to attack and destroy even the Khinoceros :§ they 



• Dr. Knox, in a paper on the habits of these animals f IVem. Trans, iv, 

 383) states that he never knew them to crunch the bones of their prey, 

 leaving the skeleton untouched. It nevertheless appears, however, from 

 Dr. Smith's interesting paper on the H. brunnea (Lin. Trails, vol. xv), that 

 they certainly do convey bones to the places of their diurnal retreat, and 

 there feed on them, as commented upon by Dr. Buckland and others. We 

 have already noticed, in the text, their propensity to carry off articles that 

 are less digestible : among various authorities for which statement, see Capt. 

 Sir J. Alexander's narrative of his late expedition of discovery into South 

 Africa, vol. ii, 235. 



t p. 187. 



J Bosman, 295. 



§ " I had thought," writes Sir J. Alexander, « that the African Rhinoceros 

 had no superior, none that he need fear, save all-destroying Man ; when my 

 companion informed me that he had once found a Rhinoceros that had been 



