140 HY,ENA. 



The existing .species of Hyaena are confined to the 

 warmer climates. The striped Hyaena (Ilyana vulgaris) 

 abounds in Abyssinia and Nubia, and extends through 

 the adjacent parts of Africa and Asia. The spotted Hy- 

 sena, (Hy&na crocuta,) and a rarer species, the Hyana 

 mllosa of Smith, inhabit the Cape of Good Hope. The 

 extinct species, to which the present section refers, resem- 

 bled more the spotted than the striped Hyaena, but was 

 a much larger and more formidable animal than either. 

 This lost species was first determined by Cuvier, by the 

 comparison of fossil remains from Continental localities, 

 which proved it to have abounded in that ancient world 

 of which his immortal works have stamped him as pecu- 

 liarly the naturalist. We find the Hyaena, says Cuvier, 

 not only in the same caverns which contain so many fossil 

 bones of Bears, but also in the unstratified drift, (terrains 

 (T alluvion,) where the remains of the Elephants are in- 

 terred. 



The discovery of the Hyana, speleea, as a British fossil, 

 is due to Dr. Buckland, in whose graphic and philosophical 

 language the circumstances of the discovery, and the de- 

 ductions of the habits of the living animals, will be here 

 principally narrated. 



In the summer of 1821, the workmen quarrying the 

 slope of a limestone rock at Kirkdale, in the vale of 

 Pickering, intersected the mouth of a long hole, or cavern, 

 closed externally with rubbish and overgrown with grass 

 and bushes. Nearly thirty feet of the outer extremity of 

 the cave was removed before it was visited by Dr. Buck- 

 land, who found its entrance a hole in the perpendicular 

 face of the quarry, about three feet high and five broad, 

 as represented in the vignette (fig. 60). The cave is 

 about twenty feet below the incumbent field, and extends 



