570 THE SAVAGE WORLD. 
unknown to most of ns, for the travelling menageries, together with the zoologi¬ 
cal gardens, have brought it to the acquaintance of most of my readers. Con¬ 
sider the camel 's feet, and remember that there is in them the beauty of fitness as 
well as of color and harmonious form. Its foot is divided into two sections and 
supplied with two toes furnished with a short nail; the foot is elongated, of 
great strength, and has a stout, horny sole. This structure would be anything 
but beautiful for the human being; it is, viewed in the abstract, less pleasing 
than the foot of the deer, or of many a bird; and yet when tried by the stand¬ 
ard of mechanical beauty—the test which the engineer applies when speaking 
of his locomotive or his engine ; the test that the mechanic must use in speak¬ 
ing of the processes of his calling; the test used by the mathematician when 
speaking of a solution—tried by its proper test, what can be more beautiful? 
The camel ' 1 s pathway is to be over sands which shift and slide away at each 
movement. If it would move with the security of man upon land, or of the 
marine beings in the sea, it must be able to fasten a sharp toe in the sand 
while the flatness of the foot makes even the shifting base a fresh support, and 
HUNTING THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 
its horny covering prevents the sand from sifting through. Were we called upon 
to re-create the world, as many an irritated person longs to do, should we be 
able to devise so wonderful a mechanism, so entirely suited to the office which 
it is to fill ? But what end is served by the hump or humps ? Is not this 
a malformation, unsightly to the eye and useless for any necessary service? 
It is the store-house whence the camel draws provisions when they cannot 
be obtained from the dreary waste over which it is passing. It is composed of 
cells which secrete and retain fat against the day of need. Still again let us 
regard the camel's third peculiarity. Its stomach has not merely the compart¬ 
ments which belong to all the ruminants, or browsing animals, but it is sup¬ 
plied, on either side, with a mass of cells which serve as tanks or reservoirs, 
and in which is stored water so pure as to be drinkable, and so necessary that 
the camel can exercise the most extraordinary abstemiousness when circum¬ 
stances require this, and can in case of desperate need more than moisten the 
