AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 2T9 



IBuUetin Mensuel de la Societe Impcriale Zoologique d'Accliination, April, 1857.] 



THE CAMEL. 



Tlie two kinds, one bunched and two bundled camels, are from 

 a comparatively narrow region. The Arabs call the central pla- 

 teau of Arabia or Nedsched, the name Om el Bel, or mother of 

 camels, and that this camel was there in a wild state one hundred 

 years before our Saviour. From Arabia it spread gradually 

 through Palestine, Syria, Persia, and the northwestern part of 

 India. It is remarkable that the camel is not mentioned as exist- 

 ing in Africa, by any ancient author, although the connection of 

 the Greeks and Romans with northern Africa was intimate. Strabo 

 and Dion Cassius speak of the Moors as using horses for them- 

 selves, their provisions and baggage over thedesurts, fastening the 

 water bags of leather under the bellies of the horses. All this 

 proves that they then had no camels, so greatly superior are tliey 

 for desert travel, that they were called the ships of the desert, 

 Csesar, in his De hello Jlfricano^ chapter sixty-eight, mentions 

 twenty-two camels found in the camp of the king Juba, in Maur- 

 ritauia. It is esteemed a proof that Juba had a few, but not of 

 their employment in war or desert travel. The Egyptians never 

 domesticated the camel. They preferred cattle, sheep, &c. 



Immense caravans of the one bunch camel safely travel over 

 ice, and in Media, over mountains, in the most severe winters, 

 with the mercury in the Centigrade thermometers, sixteen 

 degrees below zero, or five degrees below of Fahrenheit. And 

 they sleep at night on the snow, their heads only being covered 

 with a hood of felt, (say an old hat.) Nor do they suffer 

 by the sudden changes to great heat of valleys. But he is more 

 sensible of humidity. Moist heat often overcomes him; even 

 kills him. The camel, as well as man, adapts (acclimates) him- 

 self far more easily in moving to the north, than in going south. 



At the request of the Second Section, whose report was pre- 

 sented by Mons. Davelouis, and sanctioned by the Council, the 

 prize of two thousand francs, given by M. Chagot, a member, for 

 the domestication of the ostrich, either in Algeria or in France, 

 is prolonged to the 31st of December, 18G1. Evidence to consist 

 of feathers taken from not less than six ostriches, of the second 

 generation. 



