150 MAMMALS

Hemisphere and the llamas of the Western.
Although the family has few representatives now, it
was at one time very numerous, chiefly, curiously
enough, in America, whence it seems that the camels
came into Asia by way of Alaska. Both the camels
and the llamas have stomachs with three chambers,
and in two of these are the so-called water-cells, which
can be filled with fluid and closed by a sphincter
muscle in much the same way as a baleen whale can
shut his throat as he drives ahead through the water.
The dental formula is 1133 over 3123. Unlike all
the other mammals, this family has oval red blood ©
corpuscles instead of circular ones.

The spreading padded feet and the water-cells of
the camel have made it invaluable to man in sandy
deserts, and its appearance in history is of the remotest.
The wild camel has been said for nearly five hundred
years to exist in the neighbourhood of Lob-Nor, and
recently Mr. Littledale went to Central Asia in search
of them, and some of the skins of the animals he shot
are now at South Kensington. But it is very doubt-
ful if these should not be looked upon as ‘feral’
instead of wild—that is, the descendants of animals
which have escaped from captivity, like the so-called
‘wild’ camels of Arizona, Spain, and Australia. The
camel’s reputation does not stand as high as it did
amongst Europeans; on closer acquaintance they
have found him as stupid as he is ungainly, and by a
long way the least satisfactory of the world’s beasts
of burden. According to Palgrave, ‘If docile means
stupid, well and good ; in such a case the camel is
the very model of docility. But if the epithet is