(4) It has a provision round the eye for ridding it of particles of dust, and the power of closing its nostrils against the clouds of sand which constitute the most urgent annoyance and the most threatening dangers of the desert.*

(5) So universally valuable is the camel that even its dung is important to its owners. "Owing to the substances on which the animal feeds it consists of little but macerated fragments of aromatic shrubs. It is largely employed for fuel, and the desert couriers use nothing else."+

These are some of the direct provisions by which the camel, among animals, is fitted for so difficult and needful a service as to make its possession a necessity to the intercourse of extended portions of the globe. To these unusual utilities are added the full circle of secondary ones, as the value of its flesh for food, its skin for leather, and its hair for brushes and thread, for coarse and for fine fabrics. Whatever influence men may have had in completing this unusual combination of endowments, this very influence is a part of the marvel, and found its first and essential term in a primitive constitution already very peculiar. The extreme and correlated development of these several qualities in the camel, separating it so widely from other animals, puts it beyond the explanation of natural selection. Not only is the concurrence of such unusual qualities in the last degree improbable as a chance effect, there would be no sufficient occasion for this growth in the life of a wild animal. The camel, as a species,

* Dissertations of Sir Charles Bell, vol. iv., p. 275.

+ Bible Animals, p. 241.