284 
VERTEBKATA. 
charged tlie liyena with, magical powers, and the terrible attribute of bisexuality, and the mod- 
erns have heaped upon him the disreputable accusation of untamability. The striped hyena is 
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 this creature is common — ^in such 
a manner, that they believe the grave-yards peopled with disgusting demons, whom they called 
Ghouls, and so this animal is charged with having evoked the demonology of the Arabians and 
other Eastern nations from the ghastly precincts of the tomb. Such injustice might be made to 
excite sympathy, and the ardent defenders could easily, as in the cases of the human hyenas above 
alluded to, slide into gentle and 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- 
Hoods, together with wholesale thieveries and robberies, practiced from time immemorial, might 
seem rather hard features to be blended into an agreeable portrait, but who can tell what the 
seductive colors of Bulwer, Ainsworth, 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 ones from the beginning of time. The same pen that could make the first a sublime 
object of hero-worship, might at least offer a handsome apology for the last. Aaron Burr was 
the 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 goodP'' 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 agreeable re- 
laxation of inditing romance, we must proceed in our stern task of telling the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth. 
The Hyenas^ or Hycenas^ 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, and 
a glandular pouch beneath the anus. The incisors are six above and six below; the canines, 
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 large. 
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 tbe most available action, the formidable natural instruments which 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 
was 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 his molar teeth large frag- 
ments 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 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 lowest 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 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 ex- 
ceeded any animal force of the kind I ever saw exerted, and reminded me of nothing so much as 
a miner's crushing-mill, or the scissors with which they cut off bars of iron and copper in the 
metal founderies." 
The 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 jaws, 
aided by the muscles of the neck, are so strong that it is almost impossible to drag from its vice- 
