164 MAMMALIA. 
Of all animals, the Ruminantia are the most useful to man. He can 
eat it all, and it is from that he procures all the flesh which constitutes 
his aliment. Some serve him as beasts of burden, others with their milk, 
their tallow, leather, horns, and other substances. The two first genera 
have no horns. 
Came us, Linn. 
The camels approximate to the preceding order rather more than the 
others. They not only always have canines in both jaws, but they also 
have two pointed teeth implanted in the incisive bone, six inferior incisors, 
and from eighteen to twenty molars only; peculiarities which, of all the 
Ruminantia, they alone possess, as well as that of having the scaphoid 
and cuboid bones of the tarsus separate. Instead of the large hoof flat- 
tened on its internal side, which envelopes the whole inferior portion of 
each toe, and which determines the figure of the common cloven foot, they 
have but one smal] one, which only adheres to the last phalanx, and is 
symmetrically formed like the hoofs of the pachydermata. Their tumid 
and cleft lip, their long neck, prominent orbits, weakness of the crupper, 
and the disagreeable proportions of their legs and feet, render them some~ 
what deformed, but their extreme sobriety, and the faculty they possess 
of passing several days without drinking, make them of the highest im- 
portance. 
The faculty just mentioned probably results from the large masses of 
cells which cover the sides of their paunch, in which water is constantly 
retained or produced. The other Ruminantia have nothing of the kind. 
The camel urinates backwards, but the direction of the penis changes 
in coitu, which is effected with much difficulty, and while the female lies 
down. In the rutting season a fetid humour oozes from their head. 
CameE.us, Cuv. 
Camels, properly so called, have the two toes united below nearly to 
the point by a common sole, and the back furnished with lumps of fat. 
They are large animals of the old continent, of which two species are 
known, both completely reduced to a domestic state.* 
C. bactrianus, E.; Buff. XI. xxii. (The Two-Humped Camel). 
Originally from central Asia, and which is found much less southerly 
than the 
C. dromedarius, L.; Buff. X1. ix. (The One-Humped Camel). 
Which has spread from Arabia into all the north of Africa, a great 
part of Syria, Persia, &c. 
Fhe first is the only one employed in Turkistan, Thibet, &c.; it 
is sometimes led as far as lake Baical. The second is well known 
for crossing the desert, and as the only means of communication 
between the countries which border on it. 
* Pallas, on the authority of the Buchares and Tartars, states, that in the deserts 
of central Asia, wild camels are still to be found; we must recollect, however, that 
the Kalmues are in the habit of giving freedom to all sorts of animals from a reli- 
gious principle, 
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