212 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



in the extreme, not unfrequently absolutely cruel. The peculiar 

 arrangement of the camel's teeth makes his bite very formidable, 

 and gives him a specially ferocious expression. He alone of rumi- 

 nants has incisor teeth in the upper jaw, but in many other respects 

 he is an aberrant ruminant, many of his anatomical details more 

 resembling those of the horse than of the ox. Here I am in a posi- 

 tion through the kindness of Mr. W. Home, of Jodhpore, and Mr. 

 Phipson, to exhibit a most remarkable specimen — a horn taken 

 from the forehead of an Indian camel. This may be a simple keratoid 

 tumour accidentally occurring in this situation, but it gives scope 

 for the general conclusion that the camel may, very occasionally, be 

 found with a horn indicating his zoological affinities with other 

 ruminants. This will not seem so far-fetched if we remember the 

 undoubted fact that horses occasionally have frontal horns. The 

 shape of skull of both horse and camel is such as would lead the 

 zoologist at once to conclude that the animal was hornless. Even 

 in cattle and sheep, when the temporal fossa? become very large, the 

 horns are shed by a species of natural amputation. Charles Steel 

 records having observed in Afghanistan that the Bactrian camels 

 sometimes have an extra rudimentary toe, and so are specially 

 sure-footed. The hump of the camel resembles that of the ox in 

 structure but is much less muscular. The one-humped camel has a 

 rudimentary second hump, so that this distinction is not so very 

 considerable after all. In camels low in condition the hump almost 

 disappears, the animals are described as " living on their humps. " 



Finally, I trust I have succeeded in establishing to the satisfaction 

 of my hearers that the camel has been much and undeservedly 

 maligned by Europeans, and that the Arab's estimate of him is more 

 just and in accordance with the services he has rendered to mankind 

 in the past and continues to render in the present. I can honestly 

 say that my personal and professional contact with the camel in the 

 course of journeys, on the line of march, in camp, and in cantonments, 

 has impressed me with a high sense of the value of these long- 

 suffering and most useful animals. 



