ADAPTATION OF THE CAMEL. 23 



ble to these races, as are those of any other 

 animal to man in any condition of society. 



The camel lives and thrives in the tropics; 

 through almost the whole breadth of the north- 

 ern 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 re- 

 markable powers being the necessary condition 

 and sole means by which man has in any degree 

 extended his dominion over the Libyan and the 

 Arabian wildernesses. 



" At the return of the hot season," says the 

 acute Volney, " every thing dries up, and the 

 dusty gray earth offers only parched and woody 

 stems, upon which neither the horse, the ox, nor 

 even the goat can feed. In this state of things 

 the desert would become uninhabitable, if nature, 

 in the gift of the camel, had not bestowed upon 

 it an animal of a constitution as hardy and as 

 frugal as the soil is sterile and ungrateful. No 

 creature exhibits so marked and exclusive an 

 adaptation to its climate, and it would seem that 

 an intelligent will had mutually accommodated 



