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peculiarly suited to the uses of man as a migratory animal. The bread 

 stuffs of the old world, and, in a less degree, our only American cereal, 

 Indian corn, tlie pulse, the cucurbitaceous plants, and the edible roots 

 of our gardens, as well as the horse, the dog, the sheep, and the swine, 

 seem almost exempted from subjection to climatic laws. While, there- 

 fore, a degree of latitude, a few hundred feet of elevation, a trifling dif- 

 ference in soil, or in the amount of atmospheric humidity, oppose im- 

 passable barriers to the diffusion of most wild plants and animals, the 

 domesticated species I have enumerated follow man in his widest wan- 

 derings, and make his resting-place their home, whether he dwells on 

 a continent or an island, at the level of the sea or on the margin of 

 Alpine snows, beneath the equator or among the frosts of the polar circle. 



Others, again, of the domesticated families of the organic world 

 seem, like the untamed tribes, inexorably confined within prescribed 

 geographical bounds, and incapable of propagation or growth beyond 

 their original limits; while others still, though comparatively independ- 

 ent of climate and of soil, are nevertheless so specially fitted to certain 

 conditions of surface, and certain modes of human life, to the mainten- 

 ance of which they are themselves indispensable, that even the infidel 

 finds, in these mutual adaptations, proofs of the existence and benefi- 

 cent agency of a self-conscious and intelligent creative power. 



Among the animated organisms of this latter class, the camel is, 

 doubtless, the most important and remarkable. The Ship of the Desert 

 has navigated the pathless sand-oceans of Gobi and the Sahara, and 

 thus not only extended the humanizing infl.uences of commerce and 

 civilization alike over the naked and barbarous Afirican and the fur-clad 

 Siberian savage, but, by discovering the hidden wells of the waste and 

 the islands of verdure that surround them, has made permanently hab- 

 itable vast regions not otherwise penetrable by man. The " howling 

 wilderness" now harbors and nourishes numerous tribes in more or 

 less advanced stages of culture; and the services of that quadruped, 

 on which Rebekah journeyed to meet her spouse, and which, though 

 neglected and despised by the polished Egyptian, constituted a princi- 

 pal item in the rural wealth of the father of Joseph, are as indispensa- 

 ble to these races, as are those of any other animal to man in any con- 

 dition of society. 



The camel lives and thrives in the tropics ; through almost the whole 

 breadth of the northern temperate zone; and is even met beyond Lake 

 Baikal in conjunction with the reindeer, with which, among some of 

 the northern tribes, he has exchanged offices, the deer serving as a 

 beast of the saddle, while the camel is employed only for draught or 

 burden.* But his appropriate home is the desert, and it is here alone 

 that he acquires his true significance and value, his remarkable powers 

 being the necessary condition and sole means by which man has in any de- 

 gree extended his dominion over the Libyan and the Arabian wildernesses. 



In presence of the improvements of more advanced stages of society, 

 the camel diminishes in numbers and finally gives place toother animals 

 better suited to the wants and the caprices of higher civilization. Upon 

 good roads, other beasts of draught and burden are upon the whole 

 more serviceable, or, to speak more accurately, more acceptable to the 



* Ritter, Erdkunde XIII, 662—667. 



