40 THE CAMEL. 



edly serves as a repository of nutriment, and 

 the absorption of its substance into the general 

 system appears to be one of the special arrange- 

 ments by which the camel is so admirably fitted 

 for the life of privation to which he is destined. 



According to Burckhardt,^ when the ani- 

 mal is in the best possible case, in which 

 condition he is only found among the richer 

 nomade Arabs, and even there but rarely, the 

 hump is of a pyramidal shape, covers nearly the 

 whole back, and its length is not less than one 

 fourth of that of the entire body. Of all the 

 members it is last exhausted and last fattened. 

 In long journeys it slowly wastes away, and a 

 repose of three or four months is required to 

 restore it to its full volume. The Arabic lan- 

 guage has at least thirty words descriptive of 

 the conditions of the hump, with reference to its 

 dimensions, its fatness or leanness, its solidity or 

 flaccidity, and the causes of all these different 

 states of this important appendage. 



The head of the camel, especially of those of 

 the Bishari and Ababdeh breeds, is carried high 

 and nearly horizontal; and this circumstance, 

 with the length and curvature of the neck, and 

 the outline of the arched back, create between 

 the camel and the ostrich a resemblance strong 



1 Bedouins, 264. 



