Scientific Intelligence. — Zoologij. 193 



distant from each other than three days and a half. Burck- 

 hardt never heard an instance of a camel being slaughtered for 

 the sake of the water in its stomach. " The extremity of thirst, 

 indeed, induces the traveller, unable to support the exertion of 

 walking, to cling as a last resource to this serviceable animal ; 

 nor does its stomach, unless on the first day's watering, afford 

 by any means a copious supply. The swiftness of the camel 

 has been greatly exaggerated^: 115 miles in eleven hours, during 

 which occurred two passages over the Nile in a ferry-boat, each 

 requiring twenty minutes, is the most extraordinary perform- 

 ance which Burckhardt ever heard authenticated ; and this, pro- 

 bably, has been surpassed by an English trotting mare. He 

 thinks, that, if left to its own free will, this animal would have 

 travelled 200 miles in twenty-four hours ; twelve miles an hour is 

 the utmost trotting pace of a camel ; it may gallop nine miles in 

 half an hour, but it cannot support that pace, which is unna- 

 tural to it for a longer time. Nothing can be easier than its 

 common amble of five and a half miles an hour, and if properly- 

 fed every evening, or in case of emergency once in two days, 

 it will continue this pace uninterruptedly for five or even six 

 days. While the hump continues full, the animal will endure 

 considerable fatigue on a very short allowance— feeding, as the 

 Arabs say, on the fat of its own hump. After a long journey 

 the hump almost entirely subsides, and it is not until after three 

 or four months' repose, and a considerable time after the rest of 

 the carcass has acquired flesh, that it resumes its natural size, 

 of one-fourth of the whole body. The full growth of the camel 

 is attained at twelve years ; he lives forty, but at about or under 

 thirty his activity declines. In Egypt, camels are kept closely- 

 shorn, and are guided by a string attached to the nose-ring. 

 Those of Arabia are seldom perforated in the nose, and readily 

 obey the short stick of the rider. The camel-saddle of the 

 Arabian women is gaudily fitted out, and a lady of Nadja con- 

 siders it a degradation to mount any other than a blacic camely 

 while an ^Ezenian beauty prefers one which is^r^ or white. 

 Cautery to the chest of the hump is usually apphed when their 

 broken-winded caravan-camel is exhausted by fatigue. To- 

 wards the close of a long journey, scarcely an evening passes 

 without this operation, yet the load is replaced on the following 



OCTOBER^DECEMBER 1831, N 



