X96 Transactions of the American Institute. 



The camel has a peculiar capacity for canyiug fluids unlike any 

 other animal, for the purpose of adapting itself to regions without 

 water. In connection, I would relate that a dog was found on a 

 ship where all the human beings had perished, and its life had been 

 preserved for twenty-three days by its living on the cover of a 

 bible, for the wood had kept the sides of the stomach apart, and 

 the little nutriment in the leather had furnished nutrition. In 

 London, I heard of a stable where four hundred cows were kept, 

 and I had a great curiosity to see so many, not knowing but when 

 I should return, I might think the circumstance worthy of being 

 related. I found them extremely fat and sleek, and yet the owner 

 toM me they were doing badly, for every morning he found at 

 least one dead cow, and he had to keep men in the country buying, 

 so that every morning a fresh cow could be driven in to fill the 

 place of the one which died. He said the reason for this mortality 

 was the want of ventilation. He knew it very well, but people 

 must have milk, and he could not help it. If a want of fresh air 

 is so important for animals, certainly it is not less so for human 

 beings, and the mortality in one must be as great for the same 

 cause as in the other. 



The Arab horses are the best in the world, and their capacity 

 for endurance excels anything we know; and yet they are fed on 

 coarse straw, thrashed out by the feet of oxen, and dry beans and 

 barley; nor are they ever struck a blow. Beans would be good 

 food for cows, for they contain large quantities of the properties 

 of butter. The exquisite flavor of the peach is prussic acid, a 

 deadly poison, very much diluted; so of many other kinds of food, 

 but the chemical power of tlie stomach changes it in character. 

 The solvent power of the gastric juice of the human stomach is the 

 most powerful in nature. When children swallow buttons, or even 

 nails, this fluid will pick these hard substances into pieces. Now, 

 the stomach of the camel is provided with a series of pockets, 

 which hang; from its lower side. I remember that when we were 

 about to start from Cairo, in Egypt, across the desert, and the 

 camels were all loaded with several hundred pounds each, and I 

 was seated ten feet up in the air, on the camel's rump, that the 

 Sheik said that nothing remained but to water them, and we went 

 without the gates, when these animals drank as if they had had no 

 water for a long time; but they were far from being thirsty; they 

 were onl}'^ laying in a cargo of water for a long voyage across the 

 desert sands. In di'inking, one of these pockets of the stomach 



