CHAPTER III. 



SPECIES AND BREEDS. 



NATURALISTS divide the camel into two species, 

 the Camelus dromedarius, or one-humped camel 

 of Arabia and Africa, and the Camelus Bac- 

 trianus, or two-humped camel of northern Asia. 1 

 It has been suspected that the camel of the Sa- 

 hara is distinct from that of more northern Africa, 

 which is undoubtedly of the Arabian stock, and 



1 These geographical limitations, if not strictly accurate, 

 are nevertheless sufficiently so for general purposes. Al- 

 though Host, Efterretninger om Marokos, 270, saw the two- 

 humped camel at Morocco, and individuals of this species 

 are sometimes met in Syria, yet it is certain that he 

 is not bred in Africa, or in the warmer regions of the 

 Asiatic continent, but properly belongs to northern latitudes. 

 The one-humped camel has a wider range. He is found 

 among the Nogai Tartars, the Kirghises, and other inde- 

 pendent Tartar tribes, and in the highlands of central Asia ; 

 he seems to bear the cold almost as well as the Bactrian, but 

 he has in those regions neither the speed nor the powers of 

 endurance which characterize the dromedary of the African 

 and Arabian deserts. Although neither species probably 

 now exists in a wild state, yet there is good reason to believe 

 that the Bactrian was found wild at no very remote period 

 in the desert of Gobi, where this variety probably originated. 

 Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, I. 88. 



