278 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
stupid, indolent, and unexpressive features of the Camel 
or the Dromedary. Their motions too are infinitely 
more graceful, their manners more frank and confiding, 
and their tempers, generally speaking, more docile and 
familiar. Such at least is the case with those which 
have been long retained in a state of domestication : 
the wild ones are at first more shy and exhibit occa- 
sional symptoms of violence, but good treatment soon 
reduces them to an almost equal tameness with their 
fellows. This facility of domestication, according to 
the theory of M. F. Cuvier, is dependent on their pro- 
pensity for associating in herds, which may undoubtedly 
constitute a principal reason for the fact; but even in 
such animals, and of the Ruminant order, there is too 
much diversity in this respect to allow of our regarding 
the instinct of association as the only cause of their 
familiarity with man. 
Zoologists are by no means agreed with respect to 
the number of species of this group. The early travel- 
lers in America speak vaguely of the Llama, the Gua- 
naco, the Paco or Alpaco, and the Vicugna, but without 
indicating any tangible differences between them, and 
frequently, it would seem, without considermg them as 
distinct. Until within the last half century the great 
majority of naturalists, including Ray, Klein, Brisson, 
and Linneus, concurred in reducing them to two spe- 
cies, the Llama or Guanaco, commonly used as a beast 
of burthen, and the Paco or Vicugna, cultivated for its 
flesh and its wool. Of this opinion was Button when 
he wrote the history of the Llama and the Paco; but 
the observation of living specimens of the Llama and 
the Vicugna, and the communications of the Abbé 
Béliardy on the subject, induced him afterwards to 
admit the latter animal as a third species distinct from 
both the preceding. In this he was followed by Molina, 
