o50 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Singular faculty of abstaining from drinking. 



dates, or some small balls of barley-meal ; or on 

 the miserable thorny plants they meet with in 

 the deserts. M. Denon informs us, that during 

 his travels in Egypt the camels of the caravan 

 had nothing in the day but a single feed of 

 beans, which they chewed for the remainder of 

 the time, either on the journey, or lying down 

 on the scorching sand, without exhibiting the 

 slightest symptom of discontent. Their surpris- 

 ing power of abstaining from drinking appears, 

 on examination, to be an effect of their inter- 

 nal structure ; the second stomach being formed 

 of numerous cells several inches deep, and the 

 orifices apparently capable of muscular con- 

 traction. When the animal drinks, it has, pro- 

 bably, a power of directing the water into 

 these cells, instead of letting it pass into the 

 first stomach ; and when these are filled, the rest 

 of the water will be kept in that stomach, by 

 which means a quantity of water may be kept 

 separate from the food, serving occasionally to 

 moisten it in its passage to the true stomach, for 

 several days. 



When travellers, in Arabia, are greatly distres- 

 sed for water, they frequently kill a camel, for 

 what he contains; which is always sweet and 

 wholesome. 



The customary load of a large camel is a thou- 

 sand or twelve hundred pounds, arid with this it 

 will traverse the deserts, at the rate of ten or 

 twelve leagues a clay. When about to be loaded, 



