Note 67 — Inquiry respecting the Fabulous Animals of the Ancients.

I have even seen, in the collection of the late Mr Addrien Camper, a skeleton of a hyena, in which several of the vertebræ of the neck were anchylosed. It was probably from seeing some similar individual that the character in question was attributed to all hyenas. This animal ought to be more subject than any other to such an accident, on account of the prodigious power of the muscles of its neck, and the frequent use which it makes of them. When the hyena has laid hold of any thing, it is easier to drag it along by it than to wrest it from its jaws; and it is this circumstance which has caused the Arabs to consider it as the emblem of invincible obstinacy.