DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
21 
inhabited this cave, and were the agents by which the teeth and 
bones of the other animals were there collected; it may be useful 
therefore to consider, in this part of our inquiry, what are the habits 
of modern hyaenas, and how far they illustrate the case before us. 
The modern hyaena (of which there are only three known species, 
all of them smaller and different from the fossil one) is an inhabitant 
exclusively of hot climates; the most savage, or striped species, 
abounds in Abyssinia, Nubia, and the adjacent parts of Africa and 
Asia. The less ferocious, or spotted one, inhabits the Cape of Good 
Hope, and lives principally on carrion. He is seldom seen by day, 
but prowls by night, and clears the plains of the carcasses, and even 
skeletons, which the vultures have picked clean, in preference to 
attacking any living creature. In the structure of its bones this 
animal approaches more nearly than the striped hyaena to the fossil 
species: to these M. Cuvier adds a third, the red hyaena, which is 
very rare. 
The structure of these animals places them in an intermediate 
class between the cat and dog tribes; not feeding, like the former, 
almost exclusively on living prey, but like the latter, being greedy of 
putrid flesh and bones *: their love of putrid flesh induces them to 
follow armies, and dig up human bodies from the grave. They 
inhabit holes in the earth, and chasms of rocks; are fierce, and of 
obstinate courage, attacking stronger quadrupeds than themselves, 
and even repelling lions. Johnson says of them, in his Field Sports, 
* It is quite impossible to mistake the jaw of any species of hyaena for that of the wolf 
or tiger kind; the latter having three molar teeth only in the lower jaw, and the former 
seven; whilst all the hyaena tribe have four. (See Plate IV. fig. 1, 2, 3). 
