2S4: \ ERTEBRATA. 



charged the hyena with magical powers, and the terrible attribute of bisexual ity, and the mod- 

 erna have heaped upon him the disreputable accusation of untamability. The striped hyena ia 

 said, even in grave-yards, and when it is about to make its abominable feasts, to utter a fearful 

 howl, which is compared to a mocking laugh, whence he is called the "Laughing Hyena." This 

 has operated on the lively imaginations of the Orientals — where th is creature is common — in such 

 a manner, that they believe the grave-yards peopled with disgusting demons, whom they called 

 Ghouls, an. I bo this animal is charged with having evoked the demonology of the Arabians and 

 other Eastern nations from the ghastJy precincts of the tomb. Such injustice might be made to 

 te sympathy, and the anient defenders could easily, as in the cases of the human hyenas above 

 alluded to, Blide into gentle aid generous apologists. It is true, the disagreeable reputation of vio- 

 lating the sanctuaries of the dead, and of occasionally feeding on some innocent little Red Riding- 

 Boods, together with wholesale thieveries and robberies, practiced from time immemorial, mighl 

 Be in rather hard features to be blended into an agreeable portrait, but who can tell what the 

 seductive colors of Bulwer, Adnsworth, and the "Berkley Men" might do? Napoleon killed a 

 million of living men. and we may well doubt if all the hyenas in the world have devoured as 

 many dead on •- from the beginning of time. The same pen that could make the first a sublime 

 objeel of hero-worship, might at least offer a handsome apology for the last. Aaron Burr was 

 th^ moral and political hyena of his day; so at least cotemporary society adjudged him. What 

 infinite skill, what admirable talent, is that which could shroud the memory and the grave of such 

 a man in the dainty sackcloth of the proverb, " Of the dead, only good!" And if German eru- 

 dition, seconded by the author of the "English Opium-Eater," can lift from the name of Judas 

 the curse of eighteen centuries, what might not be achieved in behalf of the hyena, if any one 

 could be found to set about it? As for ourselves, not permitted to indulge in the agrecaUe re- 

 laxation of inditing romance, we must proceed in our stern task of telling the truth, the whole 

 truth, and nothing but the truth. 



Tic Ihi, mis, or Hyaenas, then, are a family of digitigrade carnivorous mammalia, distinguished 

 by having their fore-legs longer than their hind-legs, by their rough tongue, great and conical 

 molar, or rather cutting and crushing teeth, coarse, rough hair, projecting eyes, large ears, ami 

 a glandular pouch beneath the anus. The incisors are six above and six below; the canii 

 one above and one below; the molars, five above and four below; the whole number of teeth, 

 thirty-four. The false molars, three above and four below, are conical, blunt, and very la 

 The upper flesh-tooth has a small tubercle within and in front, but the lower one has none, 

 and presents only two trenchant points. The whole of the dental and molar organization, and 

 indeed the whole cranial structure, appears to have been formed with a view to the bringing 

 into the most available action, the formidable natural instruments wdiich enable the hyenas to 

 break the hardest bones. In illustration of this, Dr. Buckland gives the following account of the 

 feats of a Cape hyena which he saw at Oxford in the traveling collection of Mr. Wombwell: "I 

 waa enabled to observe the animal's mode of proceeding in the destruction of bones. The shin- 

 bone of an ox being presented to this hyena, he began to bite off with bis molar teeth large frag 

 mente from its upper extremity, and swallowed them whole as fast as they were broken off. On 

 hi- reaching the medullary cavity, the bone split into angular fragments, many of which he caught 

 up greedily and swallowed entire. He went on cracking it till he had extracted all the marrow. 

 licking out the lowesl portion of it with his tongue; this done, he left untouched the lower con- 

 dyle, which contains no marrow, and is very hard. * * * * I gave the animal successively 

 three shin-bones of a sheep; he snapped them asunder in a moment, dividing each in two parts 

 only, which be swallowed entire, without the smallest mastication. On the keeper putting a spai 

 of wood two inches in diameter into his den, he cracked it in pieces as if it had been touchwood, 

 aid in a minute the whole was reduced to a mass of splinters. The power of his jaws fai- 

 led any animal force of the kind I ever saw- exerted, and reminded me of nothing so much 

 a miner's crushing-mill, or the scissors with which they cutoff bars of iron and copper in the 

 metal founderies." 



Tin- power displayed by the jaws of the heyna would indeed almost surpass belief, if an exam- 

 ination of the structure of the animal did not explain the phenomenon. The muscles of the jaw.-. 

 aided by the muscles of the Deck, are so strong that it is almost impossible to drag from its vice-' 



