S36 - ARABIAN CAMEL. 



vegetables, to the softest herbage. As long as 

 they find plants to brouse, they easily dispense 

 from drink. 



Besides, this facility of abstaining long from 

 drink, ' proceeds not from habit alone, but is ra- 

 ther an effect of their structure. Independent of 

 the four stomachs, which are common to rumi- 

 nating animals, the Camels have a fifth bag, which 

 serves them as a reservoir for water. This fifth 

 stomach is peculiar to the Camel. It is so large 

 as to contain a vast quantity of water, where it 

 remains^ without corrupting or mixing with the 

 other aliments^'. When the animal is pressed with 

 thirst, and has occasion for water to macerate his 

 dry food in ruminating, he makes part of this 

 water mount into his stomach, or even as high as 

 the throat, by the mere contraction of certain 

 muscles. It is by this singular construction that 

 the Camel is enabled to pass several days without 

 drinking, and to take at a time a prodigious quan- 

 tity of water, which remains in the reservoir pure 

 and limpid, because neither the liquors of the body 

 nor the juices of digestion can mix with it. 



If we reflect on the dissimilarity in this ani- 

 mal from other quadrupeds, we cannot doubt that 

 his nature has been considerably changed by con- 

 straint, slavery, and perpetual labour. Of all 



* This particularity is well known to Oriental travellers, who 

 have sometimes found it necessary to kill a Camel in order to ob- 

 tain a supply of water thus preserved in its receptacle. In Mr, 

 Bruce's travels may be found instances of this. 



