Bible animals : $b being a description of every living creature mentioned in the Scripture, from the ape to the coral.Wood, J. G. (John George)
Religion
Bible animals : $b being a description of every living creature mentioned in the Scripture, from the ape to the coral.
Wood, J. G. (John George)
Animals in the Bible; Nature in the Bible
To European palates the flesh of the Camel is rather unpleasant, being
tough, stringy, and without much flavour. The fatty hump is
universally considered as the best part of the animal, and is always
offered to the chief among the guests, just as the North American
Indian offers the hump of the bison to the most important man in the
assembly. The heart and the tongue, however, are always eatable, and,
however old a Camel may be, these parts can be cooked and eaten
without fear.
The hump, or "bunch" as it is called in the Bible, has no connexion
with the spine, and is a supplementary growth, which varies in size,
not only in the species, but in the individual. It is analogous to the
hump upon the shoulders of the American bison and the Indian zebra,
and in the best-bred Camels it is the smallest though the finest and
most elastic.
This hump, by the way, affords one of the points by which the value of
the Camel is decided. When it is well fed and properly cared for, the
hump projects boldly, and is firm and elastic to the touch. But if the
Camel be ill, or if it be badly fed or overworked, the hump becomes
soft and flaccid, and in bad cases hangs down on one side like a thick
flap of skin. Consequently, the dealers in Camels always try to
produce their animals in the market with their humps well developed;
and, if they find that this important part does not look satisfactory,
they use various means to give it the required fulness, inflating it
with air being the most common. In fact, there is as much deception
among Camel-dealers in Palestine as with dog or pigeon fanciers in
England.
Here perhaps I may remark that the hump has given rise to some strange
but prevalent views respecting the Camel. Many persons think that the
dromedary has one hump and the Camel two--in fact, that they are two
totally distinct animals. Now the fact is that the Camel of Palestine
is of one species only, the dromedary being a lighter and swifter
breed, and differing from the ordinary Camel just as a hunter or racer
differs from a cart-horse. The two-humped Camel is a different species
altogether, which will be briefly described at the end of the present
article.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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