At the present day, the Hyæna is still plentiful in Palestine, though in the course of the last few years its numbers have sensibly diminished. The solitary traveller, when passing by night from one town to another, often falls in with the Hyæna, but need suffer no fear, as it will not attack a human being, and prefers to slink out of his way. But dead, and dying, or wounded animals are the objects for which it searches; and when it finds them, it devours the whole of its prey. The lion will strike down an antelope, an ox, or a goat--will tear off its flesh with its long fangs, and lick the bones with its rough tongue until they are quite cleaned. The wolves and jackals will follow the lion, and eat every soft portion of the dead animal, while the vultures will fight with them for the coveted morsels. But the Hyæna is a more accomplished scavenger than lion, wolf, jackal, or vulture; for it will eat the very bones themselves, its tremendously-powerful jaws and firmly-set teeth enabling it to crush even the leg-bone of an ox, and its unparalleled digestive powers enabling it to assimilate the sharp and hard fragments which would kill any creature not constituted like itself. In a wild, or even a partially-inhabited country, the Hyæna is, therefore, a most useful animal. It may occasionally kill a crippled or weakly ox, and sometimes carry off a sheep; but, even in that case, no very great harm is done, for it does not meddle with any animal that can resist. But these few delinquencies are more than compensated by the great services which it renders as scavenger, consuming those substances which even the lion cannot eat, and thus acting as a scavenger in removing objects which would be offensive to sight and injurious to health. [Illustration: LEOPARD ROBBED OF ITS PREY BY HYÆNAS.] The species which is mentioned in the Scriptures is the Striped Hyæna (_Hyæna striata_); but the habits of all the species are almost exactly similar. We are told by travellers of certain towns in different parts of Africa which would be unendurable but for the Hyænas. With the disregard for human life which prevails throughout all savage portions of that country, the rulers of these towns order executions almost daily, the bodies of the victims being allowed to lie where they happened to fall. No one chooses to touch them, lest they should also be added to the list of victims, and the decomposing bodies would soon cause a pestilence but for the Hyænas, who assemble at night round the bodies, and by the next morning have left scarcely a trace of the murdered men.