The Camel - Its Uses and Management

Marc Notes: Originally published: 1893?; Includes bibliographical references. Publisher Marketing: PREFACE THE following pages are principally the result of sixteen years practical observat, ion and experience of Camels in India, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Soudan, and the elaboration and expansion of diaries kept by me on different campaigns under every variety and extreme of condition and circumstance. My object in offering them for publication is manifold and obvious, as a perusal of the work mill show. In a few words- 1 To awaken and to stimulate an interest in, as well as to encourage the proper treatment of, Camels, under all phases and conditions. 2 To explain the various uses to which both the riding and the baggage Camel can be put. 3 To act as a guide to every soldier in the above, and also in the most useful and most practical doctriues of transport. 4 To promote and improve the breeding of the animal, so as to ensure the production of a superior class of riding and baggage Camel. 5 To urge a more universal use of both ridiug and baggage Camels, especially in Australia, and in the southern and central portions of Africa. 6 To advocate the establishment of a system by which Nos. 1, 3, 4, and 5 can be effected, and by which So too can be utilised with the souudest and most practical results. These are questions vhich, not only from a military, but from a national and even international, point of iem require immediate looking into, and a serious attention to which cannot fail directly to benefit the animal, and indirectly humanity. To acconplish this the more readily, also as an inducement to the yourg soldier, Thou dislikes the dry detail of a purely teclmicd n.ork, I have done my best to make it readable, by clothing it in plain and simple language, and by rendering it interesting through the relation of incidents and anecdotes. At the same time, I venture to hope that it rill find favour vith all those who take an unselfish interet in animals, and with zoologists as veil. For though I am not one myself in the strict sense, and have not written from a scientific point of view, I can claim without hesitation the undoubted advantages of having studied deeply the cnstons and characteristics of this little knom and strangely unsympathetic animal, during a long, close, and continuous contact with him, and of having done so oil purely and eminently practical principles. laying down rules and in suggesting principles I have done so altogether conditionally, basing them entirely on the broad principle that all rules and regulations depend naturally on circunlstance and on the nature of the case, and are therefore subject to alteration. I have endeavoured, hoverer, to look at each question from all sides and from various standpoints