others.

"This mongrel issue from the Dromedary and the Camel forms a secondary breed, which also mix and multiply with the first; so that in this species, as well as in that of other domestic animals, there are to be found a great variety, according to the difference of the climates they are produced in. Aristotle has judiciously marked the two principal breeds; the first (which has two bunches) under the name of the Bactrian Camel; and the second, under that of the Arabian Camel; the first are called Turkman, and the other Arabian Camels. This division still subsists, with this difference only, that it appears, since the discovery of those parts of Africa and Asia which were unknown to the ancients, that the Dromedary is, without comparison, more numerous and more universal than the Camel; the last being seldom to be found in any other place than in Turkey, and in some other parts of the Levant; while the Dromedary, more common than any other beast of his size, is to be found in all the northern parts of Africa, in Egypt, in Persia, in South Tartary, and in all the northern parts of India.

"The Dromedary, therefore, occupies an immense tract of land, while the Camel is confined to a small spot of ground; the first inhabits hot and parched regions; the second a more moist and temperate soil. The Camel appears to be a native of Arabia; for it is not only the country where there are the greatest number, but is also best accommodated to their nature. Arabia is the driest country in the world; and the Camel is the least thirsty of all animals, and can pass seven days without any drink. The land is almost in every part dry and sandy: the feet of the Camel are formed to travel in sand; while on the contrary, he cannot support himself in moist and slippery ground. Herbage and pasture are wanting to this country, as is the ox, whose place is supplied by the Camel.

"The Arabs regard the Camel as a present from heaven, a sacred animal, without whose aid they could neither subsist, trade, nor travel. It has been emphatically called the ship of the desert. Its milk is their common nourishment; they likewise eat its flesh, especially that of the young ones, which they reckon very good. The hair of these animals, which is fine and very soft, is renewed every year, and serves them to make stuffs for their clothing and their furniture. Blessed with their Camels, they not only want for nothing, but they even fear nothing. With them they can, in a single day, place a tract of desert of fifty miles between them and their enemies, and all the armies in the world would perish in the pursuit of a troop of Arabs. Let any one figure to himself a country without verdure and without water, a burning sun, a sky always clear, plains covered with sand, and mountains still more parched, over which the eye extends, and the sight is lost, without being stopped by a single living object; a dead earth, flayed (if I may be allowed the expression) by the winds, which presents nothing but bones of dead bodies, flints scattered here and there, rocks standing upright or overthrown; a desert entirely naked, where the traveller never drew his breath under the friendly shade; where he has nothing to accompany him, and where nothing reminds him of living nature; an absolute void a thousand times more frightful than that of the forest, whose verdure, in some measure, diminishes the horrors of solitude; an immensity which he in vain attempts to overrun; for hunger, thirst, and burning heat, press on him every weary moment that remains between despair and death.

"Nevertheless, the Arab has found means to sur

himself these gaps of Nature; they serve him for an asylum; they secure his repose, and maintain him in his independence. But why does not man know how to make use of them without abuse? This same Arab, free, independent, tranquil, and even rich, instead of respecting those deserts as the ramparts of his liberty, soils them with guilt: he traverses over them to the neighbouring nations, and robs them of their slaves and gold: he makes use of them to exercise his robberies, which unfortunately he enjoys more than his liberty; for his enterprises are almost all successful: notwithstanding the caution of his neighbours, and the superiority of their forces, he escapes their pursuit, and, unpunished, bears away all that he has plundered them of.

"An Arab who destines himself to this business of land piracy, early hardens himself to the fatigue of travelling: he accustoms himself to pass many days without sleep; to suffer hunger, thirst, and heat; at the same time he instructs his Camels, he brings them up, and exercises them in the same method. A few days after they are born, he bends their legs under their bellies, and constrains them to remain on the earth, and loads them, in this situation, with a weight as heavy as they usually carry, which he only relieves them from to give them a heavier. Instead of suffering them to feed every hour, and drink even when they are thirsty, he regulates their repasts, and, by degrees, increases them to greater distances between each meal, diminishing also, at the same time, the quantity of their food. When they are a little stronger, he exercises them to the course; he excites them by the example of horses, and endeavours to render them also as swift, and more robust; at length, when he is assured of the strength and swiftness of his Camels, and that they can endure hunger and thirst, he then loads them with whatever is necessary for his and their subsistence. He departs with them, arrives unexpectedly at the borders of the desert, stops the first passenger he sees, pillages the straggling habitations, and loads his Camels with his booty. If he is pursued, he is obliged to expedite his retreat; and then he displays all his own and his animals' talents. Mounted on one of his swiftest Camels, he conducts the troop, makes them travel day and night, almost without stopping either to eat or drink. In this manner he easily passes over three hundred miles in eight days; and, during all that time of fatigue and travel, he never unloads his Camels, and only allows them an hour of repose, and a ball of paste each day. They often run in this manner for eight or nine days without meeting with any water, during which time they never drink; and when by chance they find a pool at some distance from their route, they smell the water at more than half a mile before they come to it. Thirst now makes them redouble their pace; and then they drink enough for all the time past, and for as long to come; for often they are many weeks in travelling; and their time of abstinence endures as long as they are upon their journey.

"In Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, Barbary, &c. they use no other carriage for their merchandise than Camels, which is, of all their conveyances, the most ready and the cheapest. Merchants and other travellers assemble themselves in caravans, to avoid the insults and piracies of the Arabs. These caravans are often very numerous, and often composed of more Camels than men. Every one of these Camels is loaded according to his strength; and he is so sensible of it himself, that when a heavier load than usual is put upon him, he refuses it, by constantly remaining in his resting posture, till he is lightened of some of his burthen.

"Large and strong Camels generally carry a thousand, and even twelve hundred weight; the smaller only six or seven hundred. In these commercial jour

neys, they do not travel quick; and, as the route is often seven or eight hundred miles, they regulate their stages; they only walk, and go every day ten or twelve miles; they are disburthened every evening, and are suffered to feed at liberty. If they are in a part of the country where there is pasture, they eat enough in one hour to serve them twenty-four, and to ruminate on during the whole night; but they seldom meet with pastures, and this delicate food is not necessary for them: they even seem to prefer wormwood, thistles, nettles, furze, and other thorny vegetables, to the milder herbs; and so long as they can find plants to brouse on, they very easily live without any drink.

"This facility with which they abstain so long from drinking, is not pure habit, but rather an effect of their formation. Independent of the four stomachs that are commonly found in ruminating animals, the Camel is possessed of a fifth bag, which serves him as a reservoir to retain the water. This fifth stomach is peculiar to the Camel. It is of so vast a capacity as to contain a great quantity of liquor, where it remains without corruption, or without the other aliments being able to mix with it. When the animal is pressed with thirst, or has occasion to dilute the dry food, and to macerate it for rumination, he causes a part of this water to reascend into the stomach, and even to the throat, by a simple contraction of the muscles.

"This animal bears about him all the marks of slavery and pain; below the breast, upon the sternum, is a thick and large callosity, as tough as horn; the like substance appears upon the joints of the legs; and although these callosities are to be met with in every animal, yet they plainly prove that they are not natural, but produced by an excessive constraint and pain, as appears from their being often found filled with pus. It is therefore evident, that this deformity proceeds from the custom to which these animals are constrained, of forcing them, when quite young, to lie upon their stomach with their legs bent under them, and in that cramped posture to bear not only the weight of their body, but also the burthens with which they are laden. These poor animals must suffer a great deal, as they make lamentable cries, especially when they are overloaded; and, notwithstanding they are continually abused, they have as much spirit as docility. At the first sign they bend their legs under their bodies, and kneeling upon the ground, they are unloaded, without the trouble of lifting up the load to a great height, which must happen, were they to stand upright. As soon as they are loaded, they raise themselves up again without any assistance or support; and the conductor, mounted on one of them, precedes the whole troop, who follow him in the same pace as he leads. They have neither need of whip or spur to excite them; but, when they begin to be fatigued, their conductors support their spirits, or rather charm their weariness, by a song, or the sound of some instrument. When they want to prolong the route, or double the day's journey, they give them an hour's rest; after which, renewing their song, they again proceed on their way for many hours more; and the singing continues until the time that they stop. Then the camels again kneel down on the earth, to be relieved from the burthen, by the cords being untied, and the bales rolled down on each side. They remain in this cramped posture, with their belly couched upon the earth, and sleep in the midst of their baggage, which is tied on again the next morning with as much readiness and facility as it was untied before they went to rest. These are, however, not their only inconveniences: they are prepared for all these evils by one still greater; by mutilating them by castration while young. They leave but one male for eight or ten females; and all the labouring Camels are commonly gelt; they are weaker, without doubt, than those which are not castrated; but they are more tractable than the others, who are not only indocile, but almost furious, in the rutting time, which remains forty

days, and which happens every spring of the year. The female goes with young exactly a year, and, like all other large animals, produces but one at a birth. They have great plenty of milk, which is thick, and nourishing even for the human species, if it is mixed with more than an equal quantity of water. The females seldom do any labour while they are with young, but are suffered to bring forth at liberty. The profit which arises from their produce, and from their milk, perhaps surpasses that which is got from their labour; nevertheless, in some places, a great part of the females undergo castration, as well as the males, in order to render them more fit for labour. In general, the fatter the Camels are, the more capable they are of enduring great fatigues. Their hunches appear to be formed only by the superabundance of nourishment: for, in long journeys, where they are obliged to stint them in their food, and where they suffer both hunger and thirst, these hunches gradually diminish, and are reduced almost even; and the eminences are only discovered by the height of the hair, which is always much longer upon these parts than upon any other part of the back.

"The young Camel sucks his mother a year; and when they want to bring him up so as to make him strong and robust, they leave him at liberty to suck or graze for a longer time, nor begin to load him, or put him to labour, till he has attained the age of four years. The Camel commonly lives forty or fifty years. "The Camel is not only of greater value than the elephant, but perhaps not of less than the horse, the ass, and the ox, all united together. He alone carries as much as two mules; he not only also eats less, but likewise feeds on herbs as coarse as the ass. The female furnishes milk a longer time than the cow; the flesh of young Camels is good and wholesome, like veal; their hair is finer, and more sought after than the finest wool; there is not a part of them, even to their excrements, from which some pofit is not drawn ; for sal ammoniac is made from their urine; their dung, when dried and powdered, serves them for litter, as it does for horses, with whom they often travel into countries where neither straw nor hay is known. In fine, a kind of turf is also made of this dung, which burns freely, and gives a flame as clear, and almost as lively, as that of dry wood; even this is another great use, especially in deserts, where not a tree is to be seen, and where, from the deficiency of combustible matters, fire is almost as scarce as water.'

VAGARIES OF IMAGINATION.

It is well known how a man was cured who fancied that he was dead, and refused all sustenance. His friends deposited him with all due formalities in a dark cellar. One of them caused himself soon afterwards to be carried into the same place in a coffin, containing a plentiful supply of provisions, and assured him that it was customary to eat and drink in that world, as well as in the one which they had just left. He suffered himself to be persuaded, and recovered.-Another, who imagined that he had no head, (a notion that is not so common as the reverse,) was speedily convinced of the real existence of his head, by a heavy hat of lead which, by its pressure, made him feel for the first time, during a long period, that he actually possessed this necessary appendage. But the most dangerous state of all is, when the imagination fixes upon things the lively representation of which may finally induce their realization. Of this sort was a case which fell under my own professional experience, and which affords one of the most striking proofs of the power of an overstrained imagination.

A youth of sixteen, of a weekly constitution and delicate nerves, but in other respects quite healthy, quitted his room in the dusk of the evening, but suddenly returned, with a face pale as death, and looks betraying