1822.] Bones discovered in a Cave at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire. 143 
the former to the fossil species: to these M. Cuvier adds a third, 
the red hyena, which is very rare. 
The structure of these animals places them in an intermediate 
class between the cat and dog tribes; not feeding, like the 
former, almost exclusively on living prey, but like the latter, 
being greedy also of putrid flesh and bones:* their love 
of putrid flesh induces them to follow armies, and dig up 
human bodies from the grave. They inhabit holes which they 
dig in the earth, and chasms of rocks ; are fierce, and of obsti- 
nate courage, attacking stronger quadrupeds than themselves, 
and even repelling lions. Their habit of digging human bodies 
from the grave, and dragging them to their den, and of accumu- 
lating around it the bones of all kinds of animals, is thus 
described by Busbequius, where he is speaking of the Turkish 
mode of burial in Anatolia, and their custom of laying large 
stones upon their graves to protect them from the hyznas, 
« Hyena regionibus iis satis frequens ; sepulchra suffodit, extra- 
hitque cadavera, portatque ad suam speluncam; juxta quam 
videre est ingentem cumulum ossium humanorum ‘ veterinario- 
rum,} et reliquorum omne genus animalium.” (Busbeq. Epist. 
1. Leg. Ture.) Brown, also, in his Travelsto Darfur, describes 
the hyenas’ manner of taking off their prey in the following 
words :—“ They come in herds of six, eight, and often more, 
into the villages at night, and carry off with them whatever they 
are able to master; they will kill dogs and asses even within the 
enclosure of houses, and fail not to assemble wherever a dead 
camel or other animal is thrown, which, acting in concert, they 
sometimes drag to a prodigious distance.” Sparman and Pen- 
nant mention that a single hyena has been known to carry off a 
living man or woman in the vicinity of the Cape. 
The strength of the hyzna’s jaw is such, that in attacking a 
dog, he begins by biting off his leg at a single snap. The capa- 
city of his teeth for such an operation is sufficiently obvious from 
simple inspection, and had long ago attracted the attention of 
the early naturalists ; and, consistent with this strength of teeth 
and jaw, is the state of the muscles of his neck, being so full 
and strong, that in early times this animal was fabled to have 
but one cervical vertebra. They live by day in dens, and seek 
their prey by night, having large prominent eyes, adapted, like 
those of the rat and mouse, for seeing in the dark. To animals 
of such a class, our cave at Kirkdale would afford a most 
convenient habitation, and the circumstances we find developed 
in it are entirely consistent with the habits above enumerated. 
It appears from the researches of M. Cuvier, that the fossil 
* It is quite impossible to mistake the jaw of any species of hyana for that of the wolf 
or tiger kind; the latter having three molar teeth only in the lower jaw, and the former 
seven: while all the hyzna tribe have four. (See Plate XV. fig. 1, 2, 3.) 
+ Veterinam bestiam jumentum Cato appellavit a vehendo: (quasi yeheterinus vel 
Veterinus.) Pomp. Fest, 
