68 AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

and interlock in such a manner that they easily crush and masticate vegetable substances too hard and tough for ordinary cattle. The absence of the hump and of the callosity on the breast, also consti- tute striking points of difference between these animals and the camel. The llama, however, has a conformation resembling the camel'’s hump, being provided with an excess of nutritive matter, which lies in a thick bed of fat under the skin, and is absorbed as a compensation for an occasional want of food. Some of these animals, as in the camel, have callosities on the knees of the fore-legs, and, like them, kneel down in the same manner. Their stomachs and those of the camel, in some respects, aré similarly organized. That of the llama, according to Sir Everard Home, has a portion of it, as it were, intended to resemble the reservoirs for water in the camel; but these have no depth, being only superficial cells, and have no muscular apparatus to close their mouths, and allow the solid food to pass into the fourth cavity, or digesting stomach, without going into these cells. But the stomachs of these quadrupeds certainly must have some kind of internal mechanism for retaining water or secreting a liquid sub- stance; for it has been remarked, along the flanks of some parts of the Andes, that they live far above any lakes or streams, and abstain from drink a great portion of the year; and further, it has been observed that, in a state of domestication, they never manifest any desire to drink so long as they can optain an abundance of succulent herbage. From the peculiar organization both of the camel and the Ilama, we are led to infer that each is evidently fitted by Nature for the endurance of great hardships and privations—the one amidst the sands of the desert, under a burning sun; the other on the wastes of some of the loftiest mountains of the globe, with a region of per- petual snow above. The slight variations of their conformation, such as that of the foot, are modifications of Nature which befit them for their respective abodes. 4⁴ habitation amongst the rocks would be mechanically impossible for the dromedary, whilst the burning plains would be as little suited to the paco.

The llama, in its natural habitat on the Andes, at an elevation of from 8,000 to 12, 000 feet above the level of the sea, far above any lakes or streams, feeds, through choice, on a sort of rushy grass, or reed, called ichü, which grows in abundance where it is said these animals are never known to drink so long as a sufficiency of green, succulent herbage can be obtained. They also derive subsistence from the mosses and lichens which fringe the rocks among their native haunts, or by browsing upon tender shrubs. They adapt themselves to almost any soil or situation, provided the heat is not oppressive or prolonged, and the air is pure, possessing a hardiness of constitution admirably well adapted to the nature of their birth- place, where, during half the year, snow and hail incessantly fall; whilst in the higher regions, nearly every night during summer, the mercury sinks below the freezing point, and the peaks are perpetually covered with accumulations of ice or snow. It is astonishing that the temperature of the air, on mountains so peculiarly situated and exposed to the full glare of the vertical sun, should be so much

————