INTRODUCTION. 



(The following elemcntaiy paper on the Cauioi, as I'oud before 

 the Bombay Natui-al History Society, on 10th July 1889, will lead 

 up to our subject by giving a sketchy outline of its popular bear- 

 ings. It has been reprinted by kind permission of the Society.) 



In dealing with a subject so largo and so interesting as the 

 camel one hardly knows where to begin and where to leave ofF. 

 It is extraordinary how various estimates have been formed of 

 his value. Mahomed says of him that he is the greatest of all 

 the blessings given by Allali to mankind ; recent writers have 

 represented him as ugly, spiteful, unreliable at work, stupidly 

 pblegmatic, malodorous, and endowed with all the bad qualities; 

 under the sun ; his very virtues, especially steady endurance of 

 excessive toil, being attributed to want of sensibility and of 

 even the faintest gleams of intelligence. .The songs of the 

 Arab of the desert are about the camel, as one of the most 

 beautiful of created beings; the remarks of the British soldier 

 and transport regimental officer about his baggage camels are 

 not suited to cars polite ! Who is right and who is wrong ? 



We can have no hesitation in taking tho side of the Arab. 

 Still there is some excuse for the recent military opinion on this 

 subject, because undoubtedly in the Soudan, along the Nile, and 

 in Afghanistan, camel transport has not been a success, and tho 

 poor beasts have died wholesale as a rule. The Russians in 

 Central Asia, tho French in Algeria, and, recently, the Italians 

 in Massowah, have been cpiito as unsuccessful as we in our 



