CirAi'TEi: 1.— TlIK (".\.MI^:L AS AN AXl.MAL OF 

 TRAXSJ^OUT. 



There is a tenJeucy among Kun>})oaiis to clospise Camels and 

 to iffuore the important services which thev have rendered us in 



or ^ 



our wars in the East. Some few observers have, in the interests 

 of Military Service, given the Camel special attention; others have 

 somewhat studied its diseases, and it has been found that under 

 suitable circumstances and conditions the camel proves the most 

 useful of Transport animals, but under unfavourable surrounding* 

 influences he is the most unsatisfactory beast of burden with 

 which we have to deal. Though he is unsavory, unlovely in body 

 and mind, and considered very liable to disease, yet Mahomed 

 has written " The Almighty has created nothing as an animal 

 preferable to the Camel " and Daumas, in his work on the Horses 

 of the Sahara, quotes the Arab aphorism 



" Horses for a dispute. 



Oxen for poverty, 



Camels for the desert." 

 And shows that, apart from his services as the " Ship of the 

 Desert," the Camel affords in his_//t'tt'^ material for making tents, 

 ropes, and clothes; in his .s7i-//i leather for shoes and saddles; iu 

 the milk a nutritive food and pleasing drink especially valued as 

 a very nourishing food for foals*; iu his (hivg a useful fuel; nnd 

 in his Jlc^li a valuable meat food, the hump being a groat deli- 

 cacy ; similar uses of the animal are made in Tui'kestan, where a 

 sucking camel is highly prized and occasionally indulged in by 

 the rich — but the camel is too valuable to the Arab to be utilized 

 in these ways unless he be sick or incurably injured. We must 

 accept M. Vallon's conclusion that 'Miis good and bad qualities 

 render him essentially the Transport Animal of the desert. This 



* " In the autumn season with good milking the female camel will yield 

 2 or 3 Shtoffs (square bottles containing about 1/10 part of a bucket-ful) iu 

 the 21- hours, but she will not give uiorc> than GO pailsfiil in the whole year " 

 (Kostcnko). 



