412 Scientific Intelligence. — Physiology. 



and known. Steller gave a detailed description in the year 1743 

 and in the year 1768, that is to say, in twenty-five years, after 

 the last individual appears to have been destroyed. 



PHVSIOLDGV. 



2. Upon the Affinity which the Fluids of' living Organized 

 Structures have for Water. By M. de Bi.ain ville. — Naturalists 

 have long observed how much the hygrometrical and statical 

 condition of the atmosphere, in other words, how much its 

 moisture and weight, exerts an influence over the life of animals, 

 influencing their form, whether small, sleek, and elegant, or on 

 the contrary, heavy, lumpish, and swollen, according as this me- 

 dium of existence is dry and in brisk movement, or on the re- 

 verse, saturated with humidity and stagnant, as is well exempli- 

 fied by comparing together the inhabitants of Holland and An- 

 dalusia. They have also noticed that the habitual use of free 

 potations and watery viands, or on the contrary, very nourishing 

 and dry Ibod, have a manifest effect on the condition of man and 

 animals. As, however, these different results require a longer or 

 shorter time before they take effect, their mode of action, wc 

 conceive, cannot be so manifest as it was on the occasion of an 

 observation made in Egypt by M. P. E. Botta, a naturalist con- 

 nected with the Natural History Museum of Paris, and now 

 travelling in Arabia Felix. His remark is this : Camels, as is 

 well known, are the only means of transport which can be em- 

 ployed in traversing the vast deserts which are encountered in 

 many parts of Africa and Arabia, and this on account of their 

 nature, and still more their habits in which they are reared from 

 their youth, in virtue of which they acquire a power of absti- 

 nence to an extraordinary extent, being enabled to refrain from 

 eating, and especially from drinking, during almost an incredible 

 space of time. Here, however, we may remark in passing, that 

 this remarkable power is not to be attributed to th: circumstance 

 that these animals are provided with a sort of stomachic reser- 

 voir, in which they husband their supply of water, as has been 

 long alleged, and is still repeated in many of our modern publi- 

 cations, but is owing merely to the great extent of the salivary 

 apparatus, which in all animals has a development in the ratio 

 of its common food. Now, during the long journeys across 



