142 Rev. Mr. Buckland’s Account of Fossil Teeth and [Ave. 
rently gnawed to pieces like the bones: their lower extremity 
nearest the head is that which has generally escaped destruction : 
and it is a curious fact, that this portion of all the horns I have 
seen from the cave shows, by the rounded state of the base, that 
they had fallen off by absorption or necrosis, and been shed 
from the head on which they grew, and not broken off by 
violence. : 
It must already appear probable, from the facts above 
described, particularly from the comminuted state and appa- 
rently gnawed condition of the bones, that the cave at Kirkdale 
was, during a long succession of years, inhabited as a den by 
hyznas, and that they dragged into its recesses the other animal 
bodies whose remains are found mixed indiscriminately with 
their own; and this conjecture 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, irregu- 
larly compressed, as in the feces of sheep, and varying from 
half an inch to an inch in diameter; its colour is yellowish- 
white, its fracture is usually earthy and compact, resembling 
steatite, and sometimes granular; when compact, it is inter- 
spersed’ with minute cellular cavities : it was at first sight recog- 
nised by the keeper of the Menagerie at Exeter Change, as 
resembling both in form and appearance, the feces of the spot- 
ted 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 sub- 
stance under discussion, and finds it to be composed of the 
ingredients that might be expected in fecal matter derived from 
bones, viz. phosphate of lime, carbonate of lime; and a very 
small proportion of the triple phosphate of ammonia and mag- 
nesia; it retains no animal matter, and its originally earthy 
nature and affinity to bone will account for its perfect state of 
preservation. . 
I do not know what more conclusive evidence than this can 
be added to the facts already enumerated, to show that the 
hyenas inhabited this cave, and were the agents by which the 
teeth and bones of the other animals were there collected ; it 
may be useful, therefore, to consider, in this part of our inquiry, 
what are the habits of modern byenas, and how far they illus- 
trate the case before us. 
The modern hyena (of which there are only three known 
species, all of them smaller and different from the fossil one) is 
an inhabitant exclusively of hot climates; the most savage, or 
striped species, abounds in Abyssinia, Nubia, and the adjacent 
parts of Africa and Asia. The less ferocious, or spotted one, 
inhabits the Cape of Good Hope, and lives principally on car- 
rion. In bony structure the latter approaches more nearly than 
