HISTORY. 623 



combining their forces to captivate their victims, or else 

 they are more or less solitary, remaining in pairs during the 

 season of sexual desire, or while they have their young to 

 defend. They have not generally the same thirst of blood as 

 the feline tribes, although, when urged by their wants, they 

 are bold, voracious, and dangerous. They do not possess 

 the agility and suppleness of body for which the feline tribes 

 are distinguished ; but they are more enduring of fatigue, 

 more wary, sagacious, and patient, and many of them are 

 furnished with temperaments which cause them to resign 

 readily their natural habits, and live under new conditions 

 of life. Judging from organic remains, the Canidee do not 

 seem to have been called into existence on this planet at the 

 very earliest periods, but to have succeeded, in the order of 

 time, most of the more sanguinary carnivora. They are the 

 instinctive and most powerful enemies of the feline tribes, 

 killing not only their cubs in great numbers, but being fre- 

 quently enabled, by their union, sagacity, and power of smell, 

 to hunt them down. 



Connected by certain relations with the Dog is the vora- 

 cious family of Hyaenas, which earlier naturalists compre- 

 hended in the same genus. But the Hysenas, although some 

 of them approach very near to the conformation of the Dog, 

 possess habitudes and characters different from the true Ca- 

 nidse, and are regarded as forming a distinct group. While 

 at one point they pass into the Dogs, at another they are 

 connected with the Civet tribe. 



Of the Hyaenas, the most numerous are the Spotted and 

 the Striped ; the former inhabiting Southern Africa, and the 

 latter the countries north of the great Sahara, extending 

 through Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor, and other warm parts 

 of Asia, to the forests beyond the Ganges. In a former age 

 of the world, the family, although of species now extinct, 

 extended even to the higher latitudes of Europe, and 

 have left their remains in rocky caverns and mineral de- 

 posites. 



