ANIMALS. 50-5 



the vai-iable climates towards the north •, they seem formed for 

 those countries where shrubs are plenty, and water scarce ; where 

 they can travel along the sandy desert without being impeded by 

 rivers, and find food at expected distances ; such a country is 



rather could not, rise, if thus overburthened. In the East, however, the 

 camel is sometimes oppressed by the loads which are placed upon him, when 

 he is kneeUng before his driver, and he expresses his displeasure. M. Deuon, 

 who travelled in Egj'pt during the expedition of Napoleon, and published a 

 splendid work illustrative of the manners and antiquities of the country, has 

 given us a spirited sketch of a camel thus suffering and irritated. " He cries 

 out," says M. Denon, " wlien he is cither laden too heavy or laden un- 

 equally. This good animal complains only of injustice, and then it must be 

 extreme for him to complain at all." 



The camel has seven callosities, upon wliich he throws the weight of liis 

 body, both in kneeling down and rising up. These consist of one on the 

 breast, two on each of the fore-legs, and one on each of the hind. He sleeps 

 always with his knees bent under his body, and his breast upon the ground. 

 Some naturalists have contended that these callosities are produced by the 

 constant friction to which the parts are exposed upon wliich they grcjw, in 

 the same way that a tight shoe will produce a corn. M. Santi saw these 

 seven callosities upon a camel just born ; and he is imwilling to believe that 

 they are an hereditary effect of the labour to which the species has been sub- 

 jected for many centuries. This is an opinion which these naturalists have 

 adopted, and it has been echoed by historians : Gibbon says the camel bears 

 marks of servitude. For the same reason, that he is bom with it, M. Santi 

 doubts the opinion that has also been expressed, that the hump on the back 

 of the camel is an hereditary effect of constant pressure upon that part. We 

 are only acquainted with the domesticated camel : for although M. Desmou- 

 lins, a distinguished French naturalist, asserts that the camel existed in a 

 wild state in Arabia, in the time of Adrian (a. D. 117), and the natives of 

 central Africa maintain that they are to be found wild in the mountains 

 where Europeans have never penetrated, it is highly probable that these 

 statements refer to individual camels wandering from the control of man. 

 We know nothing distinctly of the camel, but as one of the most useful and 

 important servants of the human race ; and, therefore, we have no means o! 

 contrasting a wild with a domesticated species. But, iii the absence of posi- 

 tive evidence to the contrary, it is more easy to believe that the original 

 organization of the camel should have been adapted to the services to which 

 it is destined, than that the services should have altf red the organization. 

 The callosities enable the animal to receive its load, (in the only position m 

 which man could put on tliat load,) by i)reventiiig the fracture of its skin by 

 the pressure, either when it rises up or kneels do^^Ti ; and the hump on the 

 back is so far from being a callosity produced by friction, that it is a soft, 

 fatty substance, which is gradually absorbed into the system when the ani. 

 mal is without food, and is renewed wlien he obtains pastitrage,— an evident 

 proof that it is one of the several admirable provisions which he possesses 

 ♦or his support in the desert. We could as readily believe that the wonder, 

 ful mechanism of the camel's stomach, by which it is enabled to abstain 

 from water for many days, is a result of its habits, instead of its powers of 

 abstinence being a consequence of this construction, — as that its hump and 



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