226 THE CAPE HYAINA. 
blotched with circular black spots. The tail sixteen inches; hairs on the back of the 
neck and withers long, forming a reversed mane. 
The proper duty of this creature appears to be that of scavenger, and is, with regard 
to the beasts, what the vulture is to the birds; but owing to its great appetite, and 
naturally voracious disposition, it does not appear contented with merely the carrion which 
it might procure, but employs its strength and speed in destroying the flocks and herds 
of the colonists, or in killing such antelopes as it is enabled to capture. 
If this animal possessed courage in proportion to its strength it would be a very 
formidable opponent to man, and, as it hunts frequently in packs, might test the 
skill and boldness of the hunter, but, fortunately, its principal characteristic 1s cowardice. 
Owing to the custom prevalent amongst many of the South African tribes of exposing 
their dead to be devoured by beasts of prey, the Hyena has acquired the taste for 
human flesh, and therefore cases are on record of the huts of Kaffirs having been entered 
by it, and the children carried off and devoured. Most ably does the Hyena 
perform his functions in the economy of nature. Whilst the lion selects the choice parts 
of a slain animal, and the vulture those which he cannot eat, the Hyeena comes and 
finishes hide, bones, and other remnants which have been too tough for the digestion 
of the others. 
It appears to be a law of nature that those animals which take the shortest time to 
fill their stomachs can go the longest time without eating. For example, the horse and 
the ox will take from half an hour to one hour and a half to feed, and they will both 
suffer if they are kept more than a day without food. The wolf and the dog can make a 
very satisfactory meal in about two minutes, and either can remain two or three days 
without suffering much for want of a meal. We may even remark that this instinctive 
mode of eating food is prevalent among human beings. 
The rough ploughboy, whose meals are limited in number to one or two daily, and are 
composed of coarse bread and fat bacon, swallows in a few minutes these articles of 
food in great morsels which he can hardly force into his mouth, and which he scarcely 
takes the trouble to masticate. The food which is thus taken into the system will repel 
the feeling of faintness consequent on an empty stomach much more than if it were 
leisurely eaten and properly subjected to the action of the teeth. This result is only 
natural, for the better food is masticated, the sooner is it digested. 
The Hyzena in the Zoological Gardens appears well acquainted with this fact, for on 
one occasion, being anxious to see how easily he crushed a huge bone of beef, I took my 
station in front of his cage, just before feeding time. After the usual laugh had been 
extracted from crowd and Hyena, a leg of beef was forced under the bars, and was 
seized by the hysterical scavenger. A few strips of flesh were torn off and swallowed, 
and then there remained about nine inches of bone and sinew ; instead of crushing these 
into little pieces, and then swallowing it, as I expected, the wise animal just turned the 
bone ‘head on,’ took it in his jaws, made a face, contorted his body, and that solid mass 
was deposited in the yawning sarcophagus. The crowd laughed and dispersed, but did 
not remark what experience had probably taught this prisoner, viz. that when he 
swallowed the bone whole he was not so famished by the next day’s dinner-hour as when 
he ground it up into small pieces. This Hyzena, having but little variety of occupation 
for its mind, had probably devoted much patient thought to the adjustment of this fact. 
The Hyzena usually lives in holes, or amongst rocks in retired localities, and when the 
sun has set he comes forth and searches for food. He then utters a long melancholy 
howl, which finishes with a sort of bark, and occasionally that fiend-lke laugh which, 
when heard in the desert, amid scenes of the wildest description, calls up in the imagina- 
tion of the solitary traveller the forms of some spectral ghouls searching for their 
unnatural feast. 
The smell of the Hyena is so rank and offensive that no animal, other than of its 
own species, will come near the carcass. Dogs, when they come across the scent of 
the Hyena, at once show signs of fear; they will scarcely leave their master, and, 
with bristling manes and wild looks, examine every inch of ground over which 
they pass. 
