138 MAMMALS. 



bracing air of snowy peaks; The fossil remains which enable us to reconcile the affinities of 

 these members of the same family with their distribution, and to explain how they come to occupy 

 such widely separated and dissimilar positions, to do so are few and far between, and occur a long 

 way back in the history of the globe, but, like the t\vinkling of a little candle, throw their beams 

 far into the darkness of the night. 



The Camel is a very ancient beast, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, species of mammal now 

 living on the face of the earth, and it has apparently always been, as at present, a servant of man. 

 Other domesticated animals, — the dog, the elephant, the horse, the ox, and the sheep — have, with 

 greater or les? success, been referred by naturalists to their original wild types ; but all attempts to 

 do so with the Camel have stopj^ed short at the threshold, from the simple fact that it is sole and 

 singular, and has no allies in the hemisphere in which it is found, nor have any wild examples of its 

 own genus ever been met with. The first accounts of it in, perhaps, the oldest book in the world 

 (Job") speak of it as domesticated, and there are no records of its ever having been otherwise. 

 But Sir Proby Cautlcy and Dr. Falconer discovered in the Sevalik formations in the Himmalayahs 

 remains of it or of species (they think there are two) so closely allied to it as to be scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable from it. As the difference is so slight, it pleases us to think that we may have 

 here, in this most ancient animal, a species which saw the miocene epoch, and which has survived 

 all the chances and changes which have taken place since then. 



Subsequent to that time another well-marked species also existed — the huge Merycotherium, a 

 monster, a giant, a Camel as big as a Camelopard. Possibly it may have been contemporaneous with 

 the Camel during the miocene epoch, but traces of it have only been met with in the Siberian drift. 

 This may fairly be held to extend the range of the Camelidso to the eastern bounds of Asia, and 

 we find it taken up on the other side of the Pacific by the genus Camelops, fomid in Kansas, and 

 the genera Pro-Camelus and Leftauchania, from the Mauvaises Terres on the Missouri, and 

 carried down into Brazil by extinct species of the Guanaco, remains of which were found by Dr. 

 Lund in the caverns of Brazil. 



The two existing Camels affect somewhat different climates and comitries. The single-humped 

 Camel, or Dromedary, also known as the Arabian Camel, is used over the whole of the south- 

 ■west of Asia and north of Africa, and as far south and west as the river Niger. The two-humped, 

 or Bactrian Camel, is the prevailing species in the somewhat colder regions to the north and east of 

 the coimtry of the Dromedary. It extends across Asia to China, has been introduced into India, and 

 reaches as far north as the Caspian Sea, and as far west as the Black Sea and the Crimea. Both 

 species occur in Persia, Bokhara, &c., and they are there crossed with each other, and the offspring 

 is said to be sometimes fertile. It has been also introduced into Australia, where it has been 

 found less usefid than was expected. 



The Llama, &c. The existing South American representatives of the Camel consist of four 

 species, — the Llama, the Pace or Alpaca, the Guanaco, and the Vicuna. The Llama and Alpaca 

 are kept as domestic animals, — the former perfectly, the latter partially, tame. They have 

 continued so from the time of the Incas, who held them in the highest esteem. Thcj' are found all 

 along the Andes, from the Straits of j\Iagellan to the north of Peru ; but the Guanaco, which is 

 the largest, and has been crroneouslj' supposed to be the wild ancestor of the domesticated Llama, 

 dwells also in herds on the desert plains of Patagonia, and in the south-eastern parts of Tierra 

 del Fuego. It was not Icnown that they extended fartlier south than the Straits of Magellan 

 until the expedition of the Beagle ; and the ofiicers of that ship first had their attention drawn to 



