486 CARNIVORES. 



to obtain its food from the coarser parts of animals, which are 

 left by the nobler beasts of prey, the Hyaena chiefly seeks the 

 dead carcase, and bears the same relation to the Lion which the 

 Vulture does to the Eagle. In consequence of the quantity of 

 bones which enter into its food, the excrements consist of solid 

 balls of a yellowish white colour, and of a compact earthy frac- 

 ture. Such specimens of this substance, known in the old Materia 

 Medica by the name of ' album grsecum,' were discovered by 

 Dr. Buckland in the celebrated ossiferous cavern at Kirkdale. 

 They were recognised at first sight by the keeper of a menagerie, 

 to whom they were shown, as resembling both in form and ap- 

 pearance the faeces of the spotted Hysena ; and, being analysed 

 by Dr. Wollaston, were found to be composed of the ingredients 

 that might be expected in foecal matter derived from bones, viz. : 

 phosphate of lime, carbonate of lime, and a very small proportion 

 of the triple phosphate of ammonia and magnesia. This discovery 

 of the coprolites of the Hyaena formed, perhaps, the strongest of 

 the links in that chain of evidence by which Dr. Buckland 

 proved that the cave at Kirkdale in Yorkshire had been, during 

 a long succession of years, inhabited as a den by Hyaenas, and 

 that they dragged into its recesses the bodies of other animals, whose 

 remains, splintered and bearing marks of the teeth of the Hyaena, 

 were found mixed indiscriminately with their own. 



182. Felid(E. — The dentition in the well-marked and circum- 

 scribed genus of Cats (Felis) might be recognised as the most typical 

 of the order Carnivora, not only from its formidable simplicity and 

 peculiar adaptation to the destruction of living animals and the 

 mastication of their flesh ; but because it is that to which the 

 transitory dentitions of all the other digitigrade families and genera 

 more or less closely approximate. The feline formula (PI. 127, 

 fig. 1) is:— 



Incisors — ; canines — ; premolars — ; molars y : = 28. 



The six incisors in both jaws are closely arranged with their crowns 

 in a transverse line ; their fangs, for economy of space, are zig-zag, 

 at least in the lower jaw: the outer incisor of the upper jaw is 



