CAMEL. Three names for the camel occur in the O. T., and a fourth is perhaps to be added.
They are as follows :— .y?, Arab. anc. and mod.
kAp- jemel or gene!, and the like in the other Semitic languages ; Sansk. krandla, Gr. rafFiPios ; Copt. Xd..tiLO'CX rz,,jutz.-A (Sah.) The word has been sup posed by Mr. Birch to be found in anc. Egyptian, written kamr (Bunsen, Egypt's Place etc., i. p. 543), but this is an incorrect reading (see Brugsch's Geogr. Inschriffrn, ii. pp. 53, 54). On the position that the origin of the word is Semitic, two derivations have been proposed. Bochart takes it from ?•a, ganzal, he or it gave, re• paid,' because the camel was supposed to be vindictive. The reason is, however, very doubt ful, for the camel, though usually a complain ing and occasionally an ill-tempered animal, can scarcely be called vindictive. Gesenius supposes that it is related to hamala, he or it carried,' but this is too far-fetched to be even pro bable. If the name be Iranian, the Sanskrit krandla would signify the walking animal, from the root kraut, walk, step,' but a foreign word might have been modified to adapt it to a Sanskrit root (Pictet, Origins Indo-Elovpiennes, i. p. 386). 2. in, f. win, a young camel,' where the radical signification is youthfulness. 3. 1iN71i lxvi. zo), reasonably •supposed to mean dromedaries,' that is, swift camels, from 113, karar, 'he or it danced.' 4. c+),nrims: (Est. viii, 14) translated in A. V. camels,' should rather be rendered mules,' if the expression sons of mares' designate the same animals, as seems almost certain (so). Gesenius compares the Persian eistar, etc., and the Sanskrit agvatara, a mule,' the latter, which is no doubt the source, meaning that which is more than a horse, as a beast of burden (Pictet, p. 355). Gesenius should, however, have noticed the Sanskrit usktm, 'a camel,' which is found in various Iranian languages (aid, pp. 385, 386).
In the Bible, gamal and its equivalents corres pond to the genus Camelns, as constituted by modern naturalists. In this arrangement it com prises two species positively distinct, but still pos sessing the common characters of beihg ruminants without horns, without muzzle, with nostrils form ing oblique slits, the upper lip divided and sepa rately movable and extensile, the soles of the feet horny, with two toes 'covered by unguiculated claws, the limbs long, the abdomen drawn up, and the neck, which is long and slender, bent down and up, the reverse of that of a horse, which is arched. Camels have thirty-six teeth in all, whereof three are cuspidate on each side above, six incisors, and two cuspidate on each side below, which, though differently named, still have all more or less the character of tushes. They have callosities on the breast-bone and on the flexures of the joints. Of the four stomachs, which they have in common with other animals chewing the cud, the ventri culus, or paunch, is provided with membranous cells to contain an extra provision of water, ena bling the species to subsist for four or more days [even as many as sixteen] without drinking. But when in the desert, the camel has the faculty of smelling it afar off, and then, breaking through all control, he rushes onwards to drink, stirring the element previously with a forefoot, until it is quite muddy. Camels are temperate animals, being fed on a march only once in twenty-four hours, with about a pound-weight of date-stones,* beans, or barley, and are enabled in the wilderness, by means of their long flexible necks and strong cuspidate teeth, to snap as they pass at thistles and thorny plants, mimosas and caper-trees. They are em
phatically called the ships of the desert ;* having to cross regions where no vegetation whatever is met with, and where they could not be enabled to continue their march but for the aid of the double or single hunch on the back, which, being com posed of muscular fibre, and cellular substance highly adapted for the accumulation of fat, swells in proportion as the animal is healthy and well fed, or sinks by absorption as it supplies the want of sustenance under fatigue and scarcity ; thus giving an extra stock of food without eating, till by ex haustion the skin of the prominences, instead of standing up, falls over, and hangs like empty bags on the side of the dorsal ridge. Now, when to these endowments are added a lofty stature and great agility ; eyes that discover minute objects at a distance ; a sense of smell of prodigious acute ness, ever kept in a state of sensibility by the ani mal's power of closing the nostrils to exclude the acrid particles of the sandy deserts ; a spirit, more over, of patience, not the result of fear, but of for bearance, carried to the length of self-sacrifice in the practice of obedience, so often exemplified by the camel's bones in great numbers strewing the surface of the desert ; when we perceive it fur nished with a dense wool, to avert the solar heat and nightly cold, while on the animal, and to clothe and lodge his master when manufactured, and know that the female carries milk to feed him ; we have one of the most incontrovertible examples of Almighty power and beneficence in the adapta tion of means to a direct purpose that can well be submitted to the apprehension of man ; for, with out the existence of the camel, immense portions of the surface of the earth would be uninhabitable and even impassable. Surely the Arabs are right, Job's beast is a monument of God's mercy !' The two species are—t. The Bactrian camel (camelus Bactrianus of naturalists), which is large and ro bust ; naturally with two hunches ; and originally a native of the highest table-lands of Central Asia, where even now wild individuals may be found. The species extends through China, Tartary, and Russia, and is principally imported across the mountains into Asia Minor, Syria, and Persia. It is also this species which, according to the re searches of Burckhardt, constitutes the brown Taoos variety of single-hunched Turkish or Toor kee camels commonly seen at Constantinople, there being a very ancient practice among breeders, not, it appears, attended with danger, of extirpat ing with a knife the foremost hunch of the animal soon after birth, thereby procuring more space for the. pack-saddle and load. It seems that this mode of rendering the Bactrian similar to the Arabian camel or dromedary (for Burckhardt misapplies the last name) is one of the principal causes of the confusion and contradictions which occur in the descriptions of the two species, and that the vari ous other intermixtures of races in Asia Minor and Syria, having for their object to create greater powers of endurance of cold or of heat, or of body to carry weight or to move with speed, have still more perplexed the question.