PHYSIOLOGY OF THE CAMEL. f,g 



The flesh of the young camel, though inferior to beef or mutton, is 

 savoury and easy of digestion ; the she-camel yields an abundance of 

 milk as substantial and agreeable to the taste as that of the cow. 

 The camel's skin is, it is true, a coarse wool, but long, tenacious, and 

 readily wrought. The Mongols make it into tissues and cord. Out 

 of the tissues they weave their clothing, coverings, and tents ; with 

 the cord, which is of various thicknesses, they fabricate the harness of 

 their horses and other objects of equipment. Camel-leather is not 

 inferior in suppleness and solidity to that which we make use of in 

 Europe. The dung of these animals, dried in the sun, serves as fuel 

 not only for cooking food, but even for working metals. Finally, as a 

 beast of burden, the camel surpasses every other in strength, swiftness, 

 endurance of fatigue, and, above all, in that proverbial sobriety which 

 enables him to accomplish a journey of several successive days without 

 taking either food or drink. From nature he has received a special 

 organization, which well justifies his Arab name of " the ship of the 

 desert." It consists essentially in the structure of his feet, in that of 

 his stomach, and in the species of hunch or hump which he carries on 

 his back. 



"\Ve know, in the first place, that the camel's foot does not 

 resemble that of other ruminants ; it is bifurcated, but the two toes, 

 very strong and much elongated, are furnished not with a hoof, but 

 with a short nail, adhering only to the final phalange ; they are, more- 

 over, palmated ; that is to say, reunited near the extremity by a car- 

 neous membrane, which is supplied underneath with a veritable thick 

 and horny sole. The foot can thus plant itself on a wide surface, and 

 seems expressly adapted to the shifting sandy soil which the camel 

 usually traverses. 



As for the stomach, beside the four compartments into which the 

 stomach of all ruminants is divided, we notice, on the sides of the 

 paunch, a mass of cubic cells, or partitions, always containing a 

 quantity of tolerably pure water, very drinkable, and kept as a kind 

 of reserve supply ; so that more than one traveller, when crossing the 

 desert, and perceiving neither fountain, well, nor stream in which to 



