378 Professor Buckland and Captain Sykes, 



fac-simile of the mangled antediluvian remains that occur in the 

 caves of Kirkdale and Torquay. 



My Dear Sir, Poona, Uth June 1826. 



Your commission with respect to the hyaena has not been executed 

 probably with the promptitude you anticipated, but, in truth, it was 

 only in my last campaign I was enabled to meet with a hyaena, to sa- 

 tisfy myself fully with respect to the habits of this beast. At the pre- 

 sent moment, from having examined the dens of hyajnas in three diffe- 

 rent districts, I can state to you confidently, that these animals do car- 

 ry with them into the recesses of their dens their prey, or such parts 

 of their prey, as the narrowness of the entrances and passages of their 

 abodes Avill admit. I first examined some dens in the face of a hill 

 about eighteen miles north of Poona in March 1825, near a place called 

 Mahloonga. The rockiness of the ground disabled me from laying 

 them open, but I pulled out myself, from some feet within the en- 

 trances of two dens, several bones. Bones also lay strewed about the 

 mouths of the dens, but not in any great quantity. The hyaenas 

 evaded our pursuit, and the plans we laid to entrap them for some days, 

 although they had the courage to come for two successive nights and 

 devour more than three parts of a dead pony I had dragged to about one 

 hundred yards from my encampment. Subsequently to this period, I 

 had not an opportunity of examining another hyaena's den until the 

 23d December 1825. Being then encamped at Kowta, in the Pabool 

 district, a den was pointed out to me about three and a half miles S. 

 by E. from the village. I found it situated on the bank of a water- 

 course. The den had several entrances and outlets. I had these care- 

 fully closed, and trusted I had secured the animals within. The depth 

 of calcai'eous soil on the banks of the water-course led me to expect 

 that I should not meet with any impediment in laying open this den. 

 Leaving a man to watch until I could send a sufficient number of my 

 people with tools to dig at it, in tlie course of a couple of hours I set 

 fourteen men to wwk, and in a few hours more the whole den was 

 laid open to the day ; they had closed it up before the hyaenas had re- 

 turned home, and therefore did not meet with them. We found the 

 den to consist of several passages on two different levels ; some of 

 these terminated in the exits and entrances, others in small chambers, 

 not of any determinate form. In the lowest passage, at the depth of 

 several feet from the surface, and 18 feet from the nearest entrance, I 

 found numerous bones, broken and whole. These bones appeared to 

 be those of the camel, bufialo, ox, hog, dog, and sheep ; but you will 

 be enabled to judge for yourself, as I have sent you some of them dug 

 out of the den. At 24 feet from the entrance I took out the rib of 

 an ox. Not near so many bones were found outside the den as inside, 

 some few only were lying about the mouths of the northern entrances, 

 and none whatever in the bed of the water-course below the southern 

 entrance. The Latitude of this den is 18° 21" N. nearly; and Longi- 

 tude 74° 24' E. The country near is amygdaloid greenstone in Ijori- 

 zontal strata, and the elevation of the dens above the sea, determined 

 by the boiling temperature, is 1 650 feet. 



