"It has always appeared to me that the qualities and characteristics of the African spotted hyaena have met with somewhat scant recognition at the hands of writers on sport, travel, and natural history, for this animal is usually tersely described as a cowardly, skulking brite, and then dismissed with a few contemptuous words. Yet I think that the spotted hyaena of Africa is quite as dangerous and destructive an animal as the wolf of North America, which is usually treated with respect, sometimes with sympathy, by its biographers, though I cannot see that wolves are in any way nobler in character than hyaenas. Both breeds roam abroad by night, ever crafty, fierce, and hungry, and both will be equally ready to tear open the graves and devour the flesh of human beings, should the oppurtunity present itself, whether on the shores of the Arctic Sea, where men's skins are yellow brown, or beneath the shadow of the Southern Cross, where they are sooty black. There is nothing really noble, though much that is interesting, in the nature of either wolves or hyaenas, but neither of these animals ought to be despised."