244 PRODUCTS.

gradually separate. Dead bodies, which they dig out of the graves, are their favourite food, and they immediately scent out where a corpse has been interred, whether in the desert or in the burial-ground. They are also fond of picking out the young sheep from a flock, although these are enclosed during the night within a dense fence of thorn-hedging. The hyaena, however, understands mining, digs beneath the fence, and frequently breaks in upon a flock. They never do any harm to man, and there is scarcely a single instance on record of a hyaena having seized upon a man, and those, indeed, known, were only occasions where they had been greatly irritated or wounded. In Europe, this animal is very much calumniated as being the most ferocious and most cruel of all wild beasts, thus, at least, it is described in nearly all the books on natural history ; one author, in fact, copies the error from the other, without investigating his subject more closely ; hence the opinion first gained ground and subsequently became prevalent in the whole of Europe, that the hyaena is the most formidable of all quadrupeds. I and several other Europeans have convinced ourselves, that it is not only not feared, but totally disregarded by the natives. It is timid, may be cowed by blows, and rather endeavours to secrete itself than to attack. The circumstance of its disinterring dead bodies and devouring them is no proof of its being the most formidable or ferocious animal ;