WHERE THE WILD CAMEL LIVES 827 
must have left an offspring which in the succeeding 
generations has become more closely identical with the 
wild type.” Dr. E. Hahn has also expressed a similar 
opinion in his book, Die Hausthiere (Our Domestic 
Animals). 
Now this supposition naturally applies only to the 
camels which Przhevalsky himself encountered. He 
cannot possibly refer to the camels in the neighbour- 
hood of the lower Keriya-daria, for the sufficient reason, 
that he had no idea of their existence. He circumscribed 
the distribution of the wild camel in the following manner ; 
■■‘It is the unanimous opinion of the inhabitants of the 
Lop-nor region, that the real home of the wild camel is 
the desert of Kum-tagh, east of Lop-nor. It is also 
found along the lower Tarim and in the Kurruk-tagh. 
Along the Cherchen-daria it is rare ; still further west, 
towards Khotan, it is not found at all.” 
Dr. Hahn writes : “The deserts of Central Asia may 
be regarded as the home of the wild camel. All desert 
animals are widely distributed. It is therefore fair to 
assume, that the wild camel at one time inhabited the 
whole of the vast desert which stretches from the 
western borders of Further India and North Persia up 
to Mongolia. Where, and when, and by what race, the 
camel was first tamed is absolutely unknown. Probably 
it was by nomad desert tribes, who occasionally perhaps 
tilled the soil in the oases, but for the most part lived 
by hunting.” 
Although Przhevalsky’s description of the wild camel 
agrees on the whole with the appearance of the camels 
that frequent the desert north of the Keriya-daria, the 
latter cannot be unconditionally relegated to the same 
category, seeing that they apparently inhabit a limited 
region, and that there is no connection between them 
and the camels of Lop-nor. What is true in the one case 
is not necessarily true in the other. Around Lop-nor wild 
blood may predominate ; north of the Keriya-daria tame 
blood predominates. In any case the difference between 
the tame and the wild camel is, from a zoological point 
