VERTEBRATA. 



town, and their howlings are sometimes beard under Table Mountain, and in other directions, 

 daring the eights. In the countries inhabited by the Kaffirs they are very numerous and daring, 

 rally approaching the villages during the night, and attempting, either by strength or strata- 

 gem, to pass the wattles by which the houses are defended. If they be thus far successful, they 

 next endeavor to enter the houses, which they sometimes accomplish, in which ease they not un- 

 frequently carry off some young child of the family. Scars and marks on various parts of the 

 body often testifj to the traveler how dangerous a foe the natives have in this animal." 



Mr. Steedman, in his -Wand. rings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa," gives 

 most appalling accounts of the rapacity of the spotted hyena, lie states that Mr. Shepstone, in 

 a letter from Mamboland, relates that the ni.htly attacks of wolves, as the hyenas are generally 

 called, have been very destructive among the children and youth; for within a few months not 

 fewer than forty instances came to his knowledge wherein that beast had made a most dreadful 

 havoc. "To show clearly" says that gentleman, "the prelercnce of the spotted hyena for human 

 flesh, it will be necessary to notice that when the Mambookies build their houses, which are in 

 form like bee-hives, and tolerably large, often eighteen or twenty feet in diameter, the floor is 

 raised at the higher or hack pari of the house, until within three or four feet of the front, where 

 it suddenly terminates, leaving an area from thence to the wall, in which every night the calves 

 are tied to protect them from the storms or from wild beasts. Now it would be natural to sup- 

 pose, i hat should the wolf enter, he would seize the first object for his prey, especially as the na' 

 tives always lie with the fire at their feet; but notwithstanding this, the constant practice of this 

 animal has been in every instance to pass by the calves in the area, and even by the fire, and to 

 take the children from under the mother's kaross, and this in such a gentle and cautious manner, 

 that the poor parent has been unconscious of her loss until the cries of her little innocent have 

 reached her from without, when a close prisoner in the jaws of the monster." Mr. Shepstone 

 then particularizes two instances within his own knowledge, one of a boy about ten years of age, 

 and the other of a little girl about eight, who had been carried off by this species, and wrotch- 

 eillv mangled, hut recovered by the attention of Mr. Shepstone and his friends. Notwithstanding 

 this ferocity, the spotted hyena has, it is stated, been occasionally domiciliated in the houses of 

 the peasantry, "among whom," says Mr. Bennett, "he is preferred to the dog himself for attach- 

 ment to his master, for general sagacity, and even, it is said, for his qualifications for the chase." 



The strength of these animals, and their power of dragging away large bodies, is strikingly ex- 

 emplified in Colonel Denham's narrative. At Kouka he relates that the hyenas, which were 

 everywhere in legions, grew so extremely ravenous, that a good large village, where he sometimi a 

 procured a draught of sour milk on his duck-shooting excursions, had been attacked the night 

 before his last visit, the town absolutely carried by storm, notwithstanding defenses nearly- ix 

 feet high of branches of the prickly tulloh, and two donkeys, whose flesh these animals are, ac- 

 ling to our author, particularly fond of, carried off, in spite of the efforts of the people. "We 

 constantly," continues Colonel J >enham, "heard them close to the walls of our own town at night, 

 and "ii a gate being left partly open, they would enter and carry off any unfortunate animal that 

 tiny could find in the str< From the same narrative it appears that it was necessary to pro- 



tect tie graves from the attacks of these rapacious brutes. Mr. Toole's grave had a pile of thorns 

 branches of the prickly tulloh, several feet high, raised over it as a protection against the 

 flocks of hyenas which nightly infested the burying-places in that country. 



The Stranu Wolf, If. villosa, has been already alluded to, and is held by some naturalists to 

 be a variety of the striped hyena. It is about four feet four inches long, the hair coarse and 

 shaggy on tie' body, and short and crisp over the head, cars, and cxtremit) r . The general eolor 

 is a grizzled brown. It inhabits the sea-coast throughout the whole extent of Southern Africa, 

 bul is by no means so common as the spotted hyena. It lives chiefly on carrion and such dead 

 animal Bubstances, whales for instance, as the sea casts up ; but when pressed by hunger, its hab- 

 its Beem to resemble those of the other species, for it then commits serious depredations on tin' 

 flocks and herds of the colonists, who hold its incursions in great dread. Mr. Steedman, who 

 makes this statement, says he saw a very fine specimen, which had been shot^by a farmer residing 

 in the vicinity of Blauwberg, and was informed that it had destroyed three large calves belonging 



