104 * WILD ANIMALS. 



a Cape hysena at Oxford in the travelling collection of Mr, 

 WombweU. ... I was enabled also to observe tbe animal's 

 mode of proceeding in tbe destruction of bones ; the sbin-bone of 

 an ox being presented to this hy^na, he began to bite off with his 

 molar teeth large fragments from its upper extremity, and 

 swallowed them whole as fast as they were broken off. On his 

 reaching the medullary cavity, the bone split into angular frag- 

 ments, 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 lowest portion of it with his tongue : this done, he left 

 untouched the lower condyle, 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 he swallowed entire, without the 

 smallest mastication. On the keeper putting a spar of wood, two 

 inches in diameter, into his den, he cracked it in pieces as if it had 

 been touchwood, and in a minute the whole was reduced to a mass 

 of splinters. The power of his jaws far exceeds any animal force 

 of the kind I ever saw exerted, and reminds me of nothing so much 

 as of a miner's crushing mill, or the scissors with which they cut 

 off bars of iron and copper in the metal foundries." 



The striped hyaena {Hyoena striata) is the representative animal 

 of the family, and the one whose habits are the best known. 

 It is found throughout India (except the lower part of Bengal), 

 Persia, Turkey, Abyssinia, Egypt, Nubia, Libya, Algeria, Barbary, 

 West Africa, and the Cape of Good Hope. 



The thick coat is of a dark yellowish-grey, marked with longi- 

 tudinal stripes of a darker hue, which are more distinct on the 

 lower part of the body. These stripes become oblique towards 

 the shoulders and haunches. The legs are transversely striped, 

 similar to the markings of a zebra. " The front of the neck," 

 says Mr. Bennett,^ " is completely black, as are also the muzzle 

 and the outsides of the ears ; the latter being broad, moderately 

 long, and nearly destitute of hairs, especially on the inside. The 

 hair of the body is long, particularly on the back of the neck and 

 on the spine, where it forms a full and thick mane, which may be 



2 "The Tower Menagerie." 



