38 ACCOUNT OF FOSSIL TEETH AND BONES 
consistent with this solution*. And should it be further asked, why 
we do not find, at least, the entire skeleton of the one or more hyaenas 
that died last and left no survivors to devour them; we find a suf¬ 
ficient reply to this question, in the circumstance of the probable 
destruction of the last individuals by the diluvian waters. On the 
*' Since this paper was first published, I have had an opportunity of seeing a Cape 
hyaena at Oxford, in the travelling collection of Mr. Wombwell, the keeper of which 
confirmed in every particular the evidence given to Dr. Wollaston by the keeper at 
Exeter ’Change. I was enabled also to observe the animal’s mode of proceeding in the 
destruction of bones: the shin bone of an ox being presented to this hyaena, 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 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 condyle, which con¬ 
tains no marrow, and is very hard. The state and form of this residuary fragment are 
precisely like those of similar bones at Kirkdale; the marks of teeth on it are very 
few, as the bone usually gave off a splinter before the large conical teeth had forced 
a hole through it; these few, however, entirely resemble the impressions we find on the 
bones at Kirkdale; the small splinters also in form and size, and manner of fracture, 
are not distinguishable from the fossil ones. I preserve all the fragments and the 
gnawed portions of this bone for the sake of comparison by the side of those I have from 
the antediluvian den in Yorkshire : there is absolutely no difference between them, ex¬ 
cept in point of age. The animal left untouched the solid bones of the tarsus and carpus, 
and such parts of the cylindrical bones as we find untouched at Kirkdale, and devoured 
only the parts analogous to those which are there deficient. The keeper pursuing this 
experiment to its final result, presented me the next morning with a large quantity of 
album grascum, disposed in balls, that agree entirely in size, shape, and substance with 
those that were found in the den at Kirkdale. 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 exceeded any animal force of the kind I ever saw exerted, and 
reminded me of nothing so much as of a miner’s crushing mill, or the scissars with which 
they cut off bars of iron and copper in the metal founderies. 
