SPECIES AND BREEDS. 33 



popular phraseology, the term dromedary has 

 been to a considerable extent applied to designate 

 a camel with two humps, from an erroneous sup- 

 position that the swift riding-camel, (deloul, of 

 the Arabs ; al heiri or maherry of the Sahara ; 

 haguin or hedjin of the Nubians and Egyptians,) 1 

 was of that species. This mistake, imputed by 

 Hitter to Olearius, appears to have originated in 

 a misinterpretation of a passage of Aristotle by 

 Solinus and Theodore Gaza ; and the error, 



footed, and well-trained camel (to which characteristics you 

 may, if you please, add these external marks, videlicet, a 

 slender head, a short body, a small hump, and often a livelier 

 colour,) may lawfully lay claim to that honorable appellation. 

 That the proportion of dromedaries is not large, you may 

 learn from an Arabian adage, which you shall find Latinized 

 in learned Bochart, his Hierozoicon, after this wise : Homines 

 sunt ut Cornell, quorum ne quidam centesimus quisque est 

 Dromas. Men be as Camels, whereof not one in the 

 hundred is a Dromedary." The Desert, American Whig 

 Keview, No. xci. 



1 I have given these names in the orthography commonly 

 used, though certainly to some extent incorrectly, by trav- 

 ellers. Hammer-Purgstall, ubi supra, 44, thinks deloul a 

 mere local or corrupted name for the dromedary, but as 

 Burckhardt heard it in Arabia, Seetzen in the Hauran, and 

 Layard in Mesopotamia, it is at least of wide application. 

 Al heiri, or maherry, the North- African name of the drome- 

 dary, is spelled, more properly no doubt, mhari or mahari 

 by the French writers on Algeria, and Hammer-Purgstall 

 corrects haguin, or hedjin, by writing the word hddschin 

 (hojeeri), or hedschdn (Jiejari). 



