SUPPLEMENT.
MR. BRUCE has informed me that he saw a caracal in Nubia, which differed from the one of barbary, just described; his face was more round, his ears black on the outside, intermixed with white hairs, and on the breast, belly, and inside of the thighs he had yellow spots. But this is a mere variety, of which there are several: for instance, in Lybia there is a caracal with white ears, and a white tail with four black rings at the end, and which is not bigger than a domestic cat; and if this were to establish a difference we might say there are two species of caracals in Barbary, the one large, with black ears and long tufts, and the other smaller, with white ears and short tufts.
ARISTOTLE has left us two accounts by which alone the hyæna ([fig. 110]) might easily be distinguished from all other animals. Nevertheless, travellers and naturalists have confounded him with no less than four other species, namely, the jackall, glutton, civet, and the baboon; all of which are carnivorous and ferocious like the hyæna, and all have some few particular resemblances to him, whence these errors may have originated. The jackall inhabits the same countries, and like the hyæna resembles the wolf in form; like him also he feeds upon dead carcasses, and digs up graves to devour their contents. The glutton has the same voracity, the same appetite for corrupted flesh, the same propensity for digging the dead out of their graves; and though he belongs to a different climate, and his figure is widely different from that of the hyæna, yet from this affinity of disposition authors have thought themselves warranted in considering them as of the same species. The civet is a native of the same countries as the hyæna, and like him has a streak of long hair along the back, and also a particular opening, or glandular pouch; characteristics which belong only to a few animals, and which induced Bellon to suppose the civet was the hyæna of the ancients. As to the baboon, which has hands and feet like those of a man or a monkey, he resembles the hyæna still less than the other three, and it must be solely from their name that they have been confounded together.
The hyæna, according to Dr. Shaw, is called dubbah in Barbary; and Marmol, and Leo Africanus, say, the baboon is distinguished by the name of dabuh; and as the baboon belongs to the same climates, scratches up the earth and is nearly of the same form with the hyæna; these circumstances first deceived travellers, and naturalists adopted their blunders without investigation; and even those who distinguished the two animals, retained the name of dabuh to the hyæna, which in fact belongs to the baboon. It appears, then, that the hyæna is neither the dabuh of the Arabians, the jesef or sesef of the Africans, nor the deeb of Barbary. But to put a final stop to this confusion of names, I shall give, in a few words, the substance of the inquiries I have made with respect to those animals.