34 THE CAMEL. 



though exposed and corrected by Gessner, three 

 hundred years ago, and by almost every natural- 

 ist who has since described the animal, continues 

 to influence the language, and mislead the pop- 

 ular opinion, of the nineteenth century. 1 



Each of the two species comprehends nu- 

 merous varieties ; but they do not differ from each 

 other in size, in form, or in speed, more widely 

 than the breeds of the common horse. Indeed, 

 the anatomical differences between the Arabian 

 and the Bactrian camel are so slight, that some 

 naturalists have maintained their specific iden- 

 tity ; and it appears to be certain that the com- 



1 It is remarkable, that the accurate Burckhardt should 

 have fallen into this mistake in speaking of the Bactrian 

 camel, which he calls the dromedary, Notes on the Bedouins 

 and Syria, 637 ; though in his Travels in Nubia, 214, he 

 properly applies the term to the swift riding-camel of the 

 Berbers. Similar and scarcely less remarkable instances of 

 the tenacity of error, even when almost contemporaneously 

 exposed, may be found in the never-ending repetitions of 

 the old fable of the Malstrom, which, in the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, is described by Mr. Somerville, as " a 

 whirlpool a mile and a quarter in diameter ! " of Pentland's 

 erroneous measurement of the peaks of the Bolivian Andes ; 

 and of old Hugh Peters's romance of the compression of the 

 water at Bellows Falls, on the Connecticut. This last fiction 

 seems to have found special favor in Germany, where it is 

 sanctioned by the authority of Otto Berghaus and Wittwer, 

 all of whom assert that one cannot thrust a crowbar into the 

 water ! 



