CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 9. RUMINANTIA. 575 



backs of these animals. The riding camels are, however, of a different breed from those em- 

 ployed in transporting merchandise, and a good one is as highly prized among the Arabs as 

 a fine horse in England. Some idea of their speed and endurance may be obtained from the 

 fact, related by Burckhardt, that an Egyptian Camel traveled a hundred and fifteen miles in 

 eleven hours, beside being carried twice over the Nile, a process which occupied about twenty 

 minutes each time. Many of the camels of the Bedouin Arabs and of the predatory Tartars are 

 exceedingly swift of foot. 'The best easily travel a hundred miles in a day. In the interior of 

 Africa messages are sent by them eight hundred miles in eight days. One particular species, the 

 ffeirie, El Heine, or Maherry of the desert, is noted for its speed. "When thou shalt meet a 

 heirie," say the Arabs in their poetical mode of expression, "and say to the rider ' Salem AleikJ 

 ere he shall have answered thee ' Aleik Salem'' he will be afar off, and nearly out of sio-ht, for his 

 swiftness is like the wind." 



But it is not merely as a beast of burden that the camel is useful to man. His flesh is eaten, 

 and the hump on his back is esteemed a great delicacy. The milk of the female is also said to 

 be good ; the hair, which is long and soft, falls off in large flakes during the season of intercourse, 

 and is woven into a sort of cloth, which is impervious to wet, and is used by the Arabs for cloth- 

 ing and tents. His hide is made into belts and sandals, and his dung is used for fuel. The soot 

 of this fuel, after having undergone the process of sublimation in closed vessels, produced the sal- 

 ammoniac, or hydrochlorate of ammonia, which was formerly imported from Egypt into Europe, 

 where the alkali is now, however, manufactured in a variety of ways. In the East, for ages, the 

 hair of the camel has been used for textile fabrics. The raiment of John the Baptist was of camels' 

 hair. It is now principally imported for the manufacture of pencils for the painter. The hair 

 which is the product of Persia, is held in the greatest estimation. There are three qualities — 

 black, red, and gray ; the black brings the best price, the red cemes next in value, and the gray 

 is only valued at half the price of the red. So many and so important, indeed, are the uses of 

 the camel, that whole tribes inhabit the deserts subsisting almost wholly by its aid. 



The camels are among the largest of the ruminants, many of them measuring as much as seven 

 feet in height and upward of ten feet in length. Their form is by no means elegant, the dorsal 

 humps giving them a deformed appearance, which is not lessened by their long and peculiarly 

 curved necks and clumsy legs and feet. Their general expression of countenance and movement 

 has something in it of weariness, disgust, and despondence; but that they are specially and admi- 

 rably devised in their form, organization, and temper for the use of man, under particular circum- 

 stances of soil and climate, must be manifest to every attentive observer. The pads or sole-cush- 

 ions of the spreading feet — divided into two toes without being externally separated — which buoy 

 up, as it were, the whole bulk with their expansive elasticity, thus preventing them from sinking in 

 the sand, on which they advance with silent step ; the nostrils, so formed that the animal can close 

 them at will to exclude the drift sand of the parching simoom ; the powerful upper incisor teeth for 

 assisting in the division of the tough, prickly shrubs and dry, stunted herbage of the desert; and, 

 above all, the cellular structure of the stomach, which is capable of being converted into an assem- 

 blage of water-tanks — bear ample testimony to the care and wisdom exercised in the structure of 

 this extraordinary quadruped. Both species have the same general characteristics. Their sense of 

 smell is acute, and in traversing the desert it is often strikingly displayed. When apparently almost 

 worn out, and when all have been on the point of perishing with thirst, one has been known to 

 break his halter and run with unerring certainty to a spring which had escaped the observation 

 of the other quadrupeds of the caravan, and of man himself. 



The Bactriast Camel, usually called by way of eminence The Camel, is distinguished by 

 having two humps on the back. Its length is about ten feet, though many are smaller and some 

 larger ; the hair is shaggy, especially under the throat ; the color is generally dark-brown, though 

 there are varieties in this respect, some being gray and some white. . It is larger and stouter,, and 

 is relatively lower on the limbs, than the Dromedary. It originated in that part of Tartary occu- 

 pied at present by the Usbecks, and anciently known as Bactriana. It is essentially the camel 

 of cold or temperate climates, as the dromedary is the camel of hot climates. It has been em- 

 ployed from the most ancient times in domestic and military service ; for thousands of years it has 



