It is true the jackal is a wolf in every respect, but only a small one; and there is no true wolf in Africa of the large kind, such as the gaunt robber of the Pyrenees, or his twin brother of America.

But the hyena is the _wolf of Africa_.
And of all wolves he is the ugliest and most brute-like.

There is not a graceful or beautiful bit about him.

In fact, I was about to pronounce him the ugliest animal in creation, when the baboons came into my mind.
They of course exhibit the _ne plus ultra_ of ugliness; and, indeed, the hyenas are not at all unlike them in general aspect, as well as in some of their habits.

Some early writers even classed them together.
Now we have been speaking of the hyena, as if there was but one species.
For a long time but one was known--the common or "striped hyena" (_Hyena vulgaris_), and it was about this one that so many false stories have been told.