animal did not return to Lob-nor before the 10th March, but they were successful. On the border of the Kum-tagh they killed a male and female, and quite unexpectedly obtained a colt, by taking it from its dead mother's womb. This young camel would, in the natural course, have been born on the following day.
The skins of all three specimens were excellent, and had been prepared in the best way, by the hunters, to whom we had given lessons in the art of skinning and dressing. The skulls were also perfect. Some days afterwards I received another skin of a wild camel (male), killed on the Lower Tarim. This specimen was a little inferior to the others, because the animal from which it was taken, came from a warmer climate, and had already begun to shed its coat, besides having been unscientifically skinned. I need scarcely say how glad I was at length to procure the skin of an animal about which Marco Polo had written, but which no European had hitherto seen.[1]
From a zoological point of view there is little to distinguish the wild from the domesticated camel, and, as far as we could judge from a superficial glance, the differences are the following, viz.:—(a) there are no corns on the forelegs of the wild specimen; (b) the humps are half the
- ↑ [This is a mistake, Marco Polo makes no mention of the wild camel. The earliest credible record we have of it is that of Shah Rakh's envoys in 1420. See Cathay, &c., 1, cc., and introduction to Prejevalsky's Mongolia,—M., &c.]
