452 THE ONE-HUMPED CAMEL. 



times entirely without food for days, and seldom completely 

 slaking his thirst more than once during a progress ' of 

 several hundred miles, the camel is patient, and apparently 

 happy."* 



The usual food of the camel consists of dates, beans, oats, 

 barley-meal, a handful of salt, and the few thorny plants it 

 meets with at intervals during its journey. They are extremely 

 fond of the leaves of box-trees, though this food immediately 

 kills them j and, therefore, they are not brought into Ghilan, one 

 of the Persian provinces, where great quantities of those trees 

 grow. Riley says, that in the absence of food, the camels will 

 distend their stomachs with the coals which the African cara- 

 vans carry through the Desert. Of water the camel drinks an 

 immense quantity ; and the peculiar reservoirs or cisterns with 

 which it is furnished by nature to retain a large supply of water 

 to refresh itself with when necessary, have already been referred 

 to as striking instances of adaptation. Mr. J. Wilkinson says, 

 that camels will drink water which is too salt to be drunk by 

 the Arabs. He also says, that during his journey through the 

 eastern desert of Upper Egypt, towards the close of April, his 

 dromedaries passed six days without drinking, and were so little 

 distressed, that they travelled twenty-five miles to the water 

 without being fatigued ; but in June and the other warm 

 months, three days' abstinence from water, during a continued 

 journey, proves oppressive to them. 



The female camel goes with young between eleven and twelve 

 months, and she has only one foal at a birth. In the writings 

 of the numerous eastern travellers, we find nothing relative to 

 the young camel j and it is only from Professor Santi's account 

 of the camels kept at Pisa, in Italy, that we gain any information 

 about it. He says, that for the first five or six days the foal 

 is unable to stand upon its legs, and that as the mother will 

 not stoop so as to allow it to suck, it is absolutely necessary 

 to lift it up to receive the nourishment which nature has pro- 

 vided for it. We may be sure, however, that in a wild state 



* Abridged from The Menageries (1829), vol. i. p. 217218. 



