of the Peruvian Lama. 489 



losophical experiment, was made in the apartments of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons in London, and is thus detailed : " A camel, 

 in a dying state, was purchased by the College of Surgeons. 

 The animal gradually grew weaker, and was at length killed, 

 after being excited to drink three gallons of water, having taken 

 none for three days previously. Its death was immediate, for it 

 was pithed, or instantly deprived of sensibility, by passing a 

 poniard between the skull and first vertebra of the neck. Its 

 head was fixed to a beam, to prevent the body falling to the 

 ground after it was dead. The animal was kept suspended that 

 the viscera might remain in their natural state, and in two hours 

 the cavities of the chest and abdomen were laid open." 



It seems hardly necessary to add, that a good deal of water 

 was found in the animal's stomach, just as would have happened 

 in any other animal, treated in a similar way, whatever might be 

 the structure of the organ. Fluids often disappear, in some ani- 

 mals, from the stomach with great rapidity, but they also occa- 

 sionally remain nearly unaltered as to quantity and quality ; and 

 all this takes place in so capricious a manner, that no anatomist 

 would venture to predict the actual condition of the contents of 

 the stomach after death in any case whatever. 



It is obvious, then, that the function of the camel's stomach, 

 if it really be a function appertaining to it, by which the animal 

 is enabled to maintain such sobriety amidst the arid wastes of 

 Africa and Arabia, was not a discovery which flowed from the 

 examination of structure ; but that the structure being peculiar, 

 it was inferred that such must be its function, for the only reason 

 I can discover that no other function could be assigned to it. 



Having got rid of these errors, and traced the' hypothesis to 

 its source, we shall proceed to examine that structure, first in 

 the camel, and secondly in the lama, proving, I trust, beyond all 

 doubt, that they strictly and exactly resemble each other, and 

 that whatever faculty the one possesses the other also must en- 



