HY.ENAS— THE AMERICAN FELID^. 



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his first efforts and miss his prey, he attempts no pursuit, but returns to the call of his 

 master, evidently disappointed, and generally almost breathless. 



While the sanguinary felidae may justly be called the eagles, the carrion-feeding 

 Hyaenas are the vultures, among the four-footed animals. Averse to the light of day, 

 like the owl and the bat, they conceal themselves in dark caverns, ruins, or burrows, 

 as long as the sun stands above the horizon ; but at night-fall they come forth from 

 their gloomy retreats with a lamentable howl or a satanic laugh, to seek their disgust- 

 ing food on the fields, in churchyards, or on the borders of the sea. From the pro- 

 digious strength of their jaws and their teeth, they are not only able to masticate ten- 

 dons, but to crush cartilages and bones ; so that carcases almost entirely deprived of 

 flesh still provide them with a plentiful banquet. Though their nocturnal habits and 

 savage aspect have rendered them an object of hatred and disgust to man, they seem 

 destined to fill up an important station in the economy of nature, by cleansing the 

 earth of the remains of dead animals, which might otherwise infect the atmosphere 

 with pestilential effluvia. 



The striped hyaena is a native of Asiatic Turkey, Syria, and North Africa, as far as 

 the Senegal, while the spotted hyaena ranges over South Africa, from the Cape to 

 Abyssinia. Both species attain the size of the wolf, and have similar habits. As the 

 shark follows the ship, or the crow the caravan, they are said to hover about the march 

 of armies, as if taught by instinct that they have to expect the richest feast from the 

 insanity of man. The moonlight falling on the dark cypresses and snow-white tombs 

 of the Oriental churches not seldom shines upon hungry hyaenas, busily employed in 

 tearing the newly-buried corpses from their graves. A remarkable peculiarity of the 

 spotted hyaena is that when he first begins to run he appears lame, so that one might 

 almost fancy one of his legs was broken ; but after a time this halting disappears, and 

 he proceeds on his course very swiftly. 



The brown hyaena, which is found in South Africa, from the Cape to Mozambique 

 and Senegambia, and has a more shaggy fur than the preceding species, has very dif- 

 ferent habits. He is particularly fond of the crustaceae which the ebbing flood leaves 

 behind upon the beach, or which the storm casts ashore in great quantities, and exclu- 

 sively inhabits the coasts, where he is known under the name of the sea-shore wolf. His 

 traces are everywhere to be met with on the strand, and night after night he prowls 

 along the margin of the water, examining the refuse of the retreating ocean. 



The same radical differences which draw so wide a line of demarcation between the 

 simiae of the Old and the New World are found also to distinguish the feline races of 

 both hemispheres, so that it would be as vain to search in the American forests and 

 savannas for the Numidian lion, or the striped tiger, as on the banks of the Ganges or 

 the Senegal for the tawny puma or the spotted jaguar. While in the African plains 

 the swift-footed spring-bok, or the koodoo, unrivaled among the antelopes for his bold 

 and widely-spreading horns, falls under the impetuous bound of the panther — or while 

 the tiger and the buffalo engage in mortal combat in the Indian jungle — the blood- 

 thirsty Jaguar, concealed in the high grass of the American llanos, lies in wait for the 

 wild horse or the passing steer. The arrival of the Spaniards in the New World, so 

 destructive to most of the Indian tribes with whom they came in contact, was beneficial 

 at least to the large felidae of tropical America, for they first introduced the horse and 



