The callosities and tumours on their breast and legs, the bruises and wounds of the skin, the entire shedding their hair, the hunger, thirst, and leanness of these animals are not their only inconveniences; they are prepared for all these evils by one still greater, namely, castration. They leave but one male for eight or ten females, and all the camels of burden are commonly geldings; they are weaker without doubt than those which are not mutilated, but they are more tractable, and ready for employ at all times; while the others are not only ungovernable but even furious, in the rutting time, which remains forty days, and returns every spring; when, it is affirmed, they continually foam, and one or two red vesicles, as large as a hog's bladder, issue from their mouths. At this time they eat very little, attack and bite animals, and even their masters, to whom at other times they are very submissive. The camel does not copulate like other quadrupeds, for the female sinks upon her knees and receives the male in the same situation as she rests, sleeps, or is loaded. This posture, to which they are easily accustomed, becomes natural to them, since they assume it at the time of their copulation. The female goes about twelve months with young, and, like all large quadrupeds, produces but one at a birth: they have great plenty of milk, which is thick and nourishing, even for the human species, when mixed with a great quantity of water. The females seldom do any labour when with young, but are suffered to bring forth at liberty. The advantages derived from their produce, and their milk, perhaps surpasses that which would be gained by their labour; nevertheless, in some places a great part of the females undergo castration, in order to render them more fit for labour; and it is pretended, that this operation, instead of diminishing augments their strength and vigour, and adds to the beauty of their appearance. In general the fatter camels are, the more capable they are of enduring great fatigue. Their hunches appear to be formed from the superabundance of nourishment, for in long journeys, where they are stinted in their food, and where they suffer both hunger and thirst, these hunches gradually diminish, and are reduced so flat that their places are only discovered by the length of the hair, which is always longer on these parts than on the rest of the back; the leanness of the body increases in proportion as the hunches diminish. The Moors, who transport all their merchandize from Barbary and from Numidia into Ethiopia, depart with their camels well loaded, who are then very fat and vigorous, but bring the same animals back so lean that they commonly sell them at a low price to the Arabs of the desart, who fatten them anew