208 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



action, squeezes out a sufficient quantity to moisten its food at will. Cuvier 

 goes further, and says the Camel has the power of secreting or creating water. 

 How, he does not say, and we are left by his authority to our own speculations. 

 This is one curious point for our attention, and a satisfactory report upon it 

 would be exceedingly interesting to science. 



The hump is essentially fatty, and by some, has been thought to be intimately 

 connected with the animal's vitality. But I think this opinion erroneous. I have 

 seen nothing myself to sustain it, and Linant de Bellefonds, known in Egypt, as 

 Linant Bey, the Chief Civil Engineer to the Viceroy, who is particularly fond of 

 Dromedaries, told me that he had in two or three instances opened the hump and 

 cut out portions of the fat without apparently much pain to the animal, and cer- 

 tainly with no material injury to it. As I have before said, it is the animal's 

 reservoir of food. When forage is scant, its gradual absorption sustains life and 

 strength, and it is not until that is totally absorbed, that the muscles and stomach, 

 sa with other animals, are attacked. I have seen Camels coming in from long 

 journeys, with their backs almost straight. In the skeleton in your Museum, 

 there is no rise of the dorsal vertebra. In those I have anatomized, I have 

 invariably found a slight convexity of the upper line of the vertebra under the 

 hump, as it were, an arch for its support. 



It was with great difficulty that we could satisfy the public mind as to the 

 hoof of the Camel. That it was not soft and tender, but tough, and capable of 

 travelling safely and comfortably over a fair share of stony soil. On this 

 point. Dr. Atkinson and Mr. Parlane bear ample testimony. The former, the 

 Surgeon General of the Cabul Expedition in 1841, I think, without speaking 

 intentionally of the Camel, introduces him in comparison with their other means 

 of transportation ; and the Doctor speaks of its peculiar surefootedness, and 

 that its broad, tough and yielding hoof trod securely upon the rolling cobble 

 stones of the mountain torrents, while horses and mules slipping on them, were 

 thrown, often to the loss of animal or load, and sometimes of both. The latter 

 speaks particularly to the point, and says, that in his many journeys in Asia 

 Minor, he never saw a rounded hoof. And when we recollect that almost all 

 the trade of Asia, from the confines of Mongolia to the Mediterranean and Black 

 Seas, and from India to Siberia, is carried through Central Asia, over countries 

 mountainous, rugged and desert, through sand and volcanic debris, and that the 

 animal travels in climates so far north as to range several degrees below zero, 

 for instance — the Mountains of Media, at 25° below of centigrade, equal to 13° 

 below of Fahrenheit, we may be satisfied that the Camel's foot is equal to any 

 surface we shall have to expose it to on this continent, and corrects another 

 popular impression, that the Camel is an animal of the Torrid Zone, and cannot 

 stand cold. 



There is one point to which I would especially call the attention of the So- 

 ciety. At my first outset I was confused by the adopted nomenclature of this 

 class of animals established by Buifon. He calls the two-humped animal the 

 "Camel," and the one-humped, the "Dromedary." Now this classification ex- 

 cludes " the Camel" from all the world but a portion of Tartary. Travelling 

 in the East, however, we find the Arabic word " gimel" ^^d/'niel," Hebrew garmal, 

 applied to both species as the generic term, and that the word dromedary is 

 unknown. Examining further, we find the word dromedary to be a derivative 

 from the Greek, (Spofjcw;) runners or racers, ana to have been applied only 

 to the riding or swift species of the one-humped class. For my own satisfac- 

 tion, and to facilitate the cbarness of my researches, 1 adopted the word Camd 

 (Lat. Camelus) as generic, designating the two classes of their nativity. The 

 two-humped I styled the Bactrian Camel, from its ancient home, Bactria, and 

 the single-humped, the Arabian Camel, from the country of its origin in Arabia ; 

 reserving the word dromedary as applicable only to the riding animal of the 

 one-humped species. Subsequently, finding these views to be entertained by 

 Gen. 15. Dumas, of the French Army, Director of, and long connected with, 

 the affairs of Algeria, and by Linant Bey, of Egypt, I have openly adopted this 



[December, 



