30 THE CAMEL 



reason for taking greater care of the animal than 

 we do. 



Mouth Professor Owen writes : ' The mouth seems formed to 



save for the animal every drop of the fluid excretion of 

 the nose ; a channel leads from each nostril to the mid- 

 fissure dividing the upper lip, which is continued down 

 into the mouth.' 



Unlike the blood of a man, the blood of the 

 camel has oval corpuscles, and the vertebrae in the 

 neck remain, as they always have been, seven in 

 number. 



Palatal During the rutting season the palatal flap of the 



males alone an inflated organ which only appears when 

 the animal is 'mast' hangs from the mouth like a 

 bladder, invariably on one side only the near, if I 

 remember right. It never appears until the animal 

 reaches the age of puberty, which is usually in his fifth 

 year. The female, although she possesses one, never 

 produces it. V. S. Steel speaks of it as a peculiar 

 membranous kind of bag which protrudes from the 

 mouth accompanied by a gurgling sound; and he says 

 that the popular and even suggestive idea that it 

 refreshes itself by bringing water into the mouth and 

 fauces is misleading, if not erroneous, as he failed 

 after a most careful post-mortem examination to detect 

 any duct by which water could enter from the 

 oesophagus. 



Professor Owen, however, thinks that ' the surface 

 of what he calls a broad pendulous flap hanging down 

 from the fore part of the soft palate and usually resting 

 upon the dorsum of the tongue- ' shows the pores of 

 innumerable mucous crypts, and in the ordinary state 



