OF THE SIVALIK HILLS. 131 



could exist, as the only means by which communication could be maintain- 

 ed over oceans of sand and miles of desert. If any care be given to the breed 

 of the Camel in its domestic state, we should expect to find it in this 

 quarter; but among the people of India who use the animal merely as a 

 beast of burthen, and carry on the breed much in the same way as they do 

 with their other domesticated animals, Ave have no reason to expect 

 any improvement. In the Government stud we have no doubt that 

 all feasible means are exerted to improve the breed, or at least to 

 prevent deterioration by maintaining a stock from the largest and 

 finest grown animals. It will be noted that one of the skulls referred to in 

 this paper is from the stud, and the person to whom we are indebted for its 

 use as a means of comparison described it as having belonged to a very 

 large male Camel : but here also we see no great difference in size, 

 although there are differences in the greater development of the bones of 

 the head and face. The constant influx of Camels in the whole sweep of 

 the Indus and its branches from Ludiana to Shikdrpur, or even to the 

 Indian ocean, most undoubtedly keeps up the supply, but does not add any- 

 thing to the improvement of the species. Indeed, we are inclined to con- 

 sider that the Camel has deteriorated in size from that to which it attained 

 in its wild and natural character, and should our inference be correct, the 

 dimensions obtained from the comparative measurement of the bones of 

 our fossil species, may lead to a very tolerable idea of the size to which the 

 Camel reached, when unshackled by the trammels of man, and leading its 

 existence in the wilds of its own native region. 



We regret our inability, from want of specimens, of adding to this com- 

 parative statement, the dimensions and peculiarities of form of the Bactrian 

 or true Camel with two humps, Camelus Bactrianus of authors. The Camc- 

 lus Dromedarius or the Dromedary with one hump is the animal from which 

 we have drawn our description. In Stark's Natural History the former is 

 stated to be the /o/^« e5^ of the two — Camelus Bactrianus heing described as 

 " about 10 feet long,'' and Camelus Dromedarius as " nearly 8 feet long.'' 

 We are not aware of the limits upon which the above measurements are 



