Professor Buckland on the Dens of' Living Hyanas. 3T7 



iegislative interference, as being subversive of free trade in 

 general. II. Witham, Esq. F. R. S. E. &c. 



Letter of Professor Buckland to Professor Jameson, and of 

 Captain Sykes to Professor Buckland, on the Interior of 

 the Dens of living HycBnas. 



^^^^ ^'^' Oxford, 5th March 1827. 



XN the 4th volume of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society of 

 Edinburgh, a paper has been printed by Dr Knox, in which he 

 expresses doubts as to a circumstance I have insisted on in my 

 history of the Cave of Kirkdale, namely, that it is the habit of 

 Jiving hyaenas to drag home their prey to the interior of their 

 dens. 



These doubts he allows are founded only on the two nega- 

 tive facts, that, during his residence at the Cape, he has never 

 seen hyaenas engaged in the act of dragging dead carcases into 

 their den, nor ever examined, or caused to be examined, the in- 

 terior of their habitation, to see what may be its contents. He at 

 the same time candidly admits, that negative evidence is never 

 reckoned so good as positive ; and that, after all, my theory is 

 perhaps the best hitherto offered. 



In No. 28, also, of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 

 Dr Fleming contends, it is more probable that the bones dis- 

 covered in the cave of Kirkdale have been drifted in by water, 

 than gradually accumulated by the agency of hyaenas that once 

 inhabited it ; and adds, that " the evidence proving the Kirk- 

 dale Cave to have been an Antediluvian Den, seems in all its 

 parts so deficient in precision, as to warrant the rejection of that 

 hypothesis it had been produced to support." 



As in cases of this nature, where the question is concerning 

 facts, the evidence of accurate and independent observers is most 

 competent to decide the point at issue, I subjoin a copy of a 

 letter I have lately received from Captain Sykes, a friend of 

 Dr Somerville, now on service near Bombay, who has recently 

 been investigating this subject. From his observations, it appears 

 that the interior of a living hyaena's den, presents an exact 



