THE HEAD. 41 



enough abundantly to justify the name oistnithiO' 

 camelus, which the Roman naturalists, and that 

 of camel-bird, which, according to Niebuhr, the 

 Arabs ajDply to that gigantic fowl.^ But notwith- 

 standing this horizontal bearing of the brow and 

 front, the camel is but an apparent exception to 

 the limitation which permits man alone ccelum tu- 

 eri. For though he seems erectos ad sidera tollere 

 vultus, the structure of the skull and the position 

 of the eye forbid an upward glance. The eye is 

 projecting, sheltered above by a salient bony 

 arch, and its axis is nearly parallel to that of the 

 head, though with a slight inclination towards 

 it anteriorly. From this conformation of the 

 organ, the sight of the animal is habitually di- 

 rected rather downwards than forward, to the 

 ground upon which he is just about to tread 

 than to the distance. It is, in a great degree, to 

 this structure, as I believe, that his remarkable 

 sure-footedness is to be attributed. The eye 

 always scans the surface where the foot is next 

 to be placed ; and in moving about among the 

 scattered luggage and furniture of a camp, he 



1 " The ostrich himself seems to have a dim consciousness 

 that he is a sort of equivocal middle-thing between a volatile 

 and a quadruped, for when they said to him, fly ! he answered, 

 ' I cannot, I am a camel ;' when they said, carry ! he replied, 

 ' I cannot, I am a bird.' " 



From the unpublished Journal of a Traveller in the East. 



