146 HY ANA. 
comminuted state and apparently gnawed condition of the 
bones, that the cave at Kirkdale had been, during a long 
succession of years, inhabited as a den by Hyenas, and that 
they dragged mto its recesses the other animal bodies whose 
remains are found mixed indiscriminately with their own. 
“This conjecture,” he states, ‘is rendered almost certain 
by the discovery I made, of many small balls of the solid 
calcareous excrement of an animal that had fed on bones, 
resembling the substance known in the old Materia Medica 
by the name of ‘album grecum ;’ its external form is that of 
a sphere irregularly compressed, as in the feces of sheep, 
and varying from half an inch to an inch and half in dia- 
meter ; its colour is yellowish white ; its fracture is usually 
earthy and compact, resembling steatite, and sometimes 
granular ; when compact, it is interspersed with small 
cellular cavities, and, in some of the balls, there are undi- 
gested minute fragments of the enamel of teeth. 
“It was, at first sight, recognized by the keeper of the 
menagerie at Exeter Change, as resembling, both in form 
and appearance, the feeces of the Spotted, or Cape Hyena, 
which he stated to be greedy of bones beyond all other 
beasts under his care. 
‘This information I owe to Dr. Wollaston, who has 
also made an analysis of the substance under discussion, 
and finds it to be composed of the ingredients that might 
be expected in feecal matter derived from bones, viz., phos- 
phate of lime, carbonate of lime, and a very small propor- 
tion of the triple phosphate of ammonia and magnesia ; 
it retains no animal matter, and its originally earthy 
nature and affinity to bone will account for its perfect 
state of preservation.” 
The force of this evidence, the most conclusive that 
eould be added to the previously ascertaimed facts, has 
