270 HY^NA. 



nevertlieless, for our present purpose, be permitted 

 to place them in juxta position, and by closing the 

 volume with the genus Proteles, restore the links of 

 the chain to the Viverrine family of Civets and 

 Byzasnas. 



The hyaenas, according to the system of Linnaeus, 

 were included in his genus Canis, but they difter 

 widely in many respects from the more strictly con- 

 sidered Canidce. They form a group of species 

 singularly coarse and ferocious in character, with 

 sanguinary and revolting habits, with constitutions 

 seemingly capable of resisting the extremes of tem- 

 peratures, the most noxious states of the atmosphere, 

 and adapted to gorge on the grossest animal sub- 

 stances, prey, dead or alive, fresh or corrupted, 

 great and small, being aUke devoured by them. If 

 the genus be now comparatively not numerous, and 

 confined at present to regions within or near the 

 torrid zone, there was a period, in the interme- 

 diate time of the existence of organised beings, when 

 the hyasna appears to have been universally spread 

 over the great surface of the old world; for, al- 

 though the debris of great felinee, and of bears, are 

 likewise discovered in the deluvian strata and ca- 

 verns of our present period, they bear no compari- 

 son, in point of numbers or extent, to the immense 

 quantity of fossil remains of hyaenas (H. spelea) 

 spread through the earth, from Great Britain to 

 Tibet, as if they had been appointed almost the 

 sole consumers of mastodons, elephants, tapirs, and 

 the great ruminantia of that period ; the marks of 



