Hump

“ 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. ”

“ The callosities upon the limbs and chest, and the hump on the back, have caused much perplexity among naturalists; but, perhaps, their purpose may be explained. They seem to bear some relation to the necessities of the animal, considered as the slave or man. The callosities are the points on which it kneels down to receive its burden. The hump, which is a fatty secretion, is known to be absorbed into the system when the animal is pinched for food, thus forming a provision against the casualties to which it is subject in a life evidently ordained to be passed in the desert. ”

“ A large crop hangs down from the neck, and there is a high hump on the back. The whole head, neck, and part of the shoulders are covered with a great mane like a horse’s; it is a foot long and gives them a hideous appearance, and as it falls over the eyes prevents their seeing straight ahead. ”

“ Their swarthy color, their wild, shaggy hair, their thick mane, the profusion of rough and bristling 141 hair about the face, the enormous hump upon the shoulders, together with the fierce countenance of these animals, rendered them objects at once interesting and formidable.
And if this was their appearance, taken singly, the spectacle of thousands of these huge beasts was hardly short of sublime. The whole mass were moving slowly forward. Some paused occasionally, to nip the herbage, or devour the leaves from a favorite shrub, and others sauntered on with a careless and indifferent air. ”

“ The greater part of the animal is covered with long brown hair, thick, matted and curly on the shoulders, so as to give the appearance of a hump, but elsewhere straight and hanging down—that of the sides, back and haunches reaching as far as the middle of the legs and entirely concealing the very short tail. ”

“ And now the splendid part played by the hump stands revealed. Glass tubes, which I had got ready in anticipation, [282] allow me to watch the grub at work. Growing plumper and plumper and more and more humpbacked, it withdraws to one end of the cell, which has become a crumbling ruin. Here it builds a casket in which the transformation will take place. Its materials are the digestive residuum, converted into mortar and heaped up in the hump. The stercoral architect is about to construct a masterpiece of elegance out of its own ordure, held in reserve in that receptacle. ”

“ The hump may be taken off by skinning down on each side of the shoulders and cutting away the meat, after which the hump-ribs can be unjointed where they unite with the spine. The marrow, when roasted in the bones, is delicious. ”

“ A few sticks and branches and tufts of grass are already fast in the embrace of the powerful stems and green leaves, while at the end that faces the stream the water-driven sand has risen at the obstacle, and has shyly protruded a small round hump or two above the ripples. ”

“ From the neck the body rises, forming a large hump on the back over the forelegs, which gives the animal an odd and unwieldy appearance. This hump consists of fat and strong muscles which control the movements of the massive head. ”

“ Instead of a gristly substance, as sometimes stated, the hump is produced by a convex tier of vertical ribs, which project from the spine, forming a gradual curve over the shoulders: those of the middle being sometimes nearly two feet in length. ”

“ It also rears and bucks, and jumps from side to side, and tries its best to throw its rider, same as a mule does, and it wouldn't look unlike one if it only had legs, and a tail, and ears, and hair, and a bray."
"Humph!" interrupted Bonny, who had been an interested listener to this vague description of a hump-durgin. "A log of wood might look like a hump-durgin if it had all those things."
"Right you are, son! A log of wood might look like a hump-durgin, and then again it mightn't. Same time I've often thought that some hump-durgins wasn't much better than logs of wood, after all. ”

“ Be lively there now, some of you, and hand that hump down here.'
"And then some of the Good People got Lusmore's hump, that was hanging up under the roof, and they clapped it on his back, on the top of his own, and then they threw him out of the rath. And there his mother found him in the [176] morning, more dead than alive and with a hump twice as big as before."
"A fine story that is, Mrs. O'Brien," Terence said, when the old woman had finished. ”

“ When gently exploring, he crawls among the weeds on the tips of his long feet; when swimming at ease, he glides gracefully along by the rapid paddling of the false feet, of which he carries five pairs beneath his abdomen. But when alarmed, he forcibly throws forward this plated tail, expanded to the utmost, bending the last joints of the body from the hump on his back, and thus strikes a powerful forward blow on the water, by the impact of which the whole prawn is jerked backward to a distance of several inches. ”

“ They would be away no less than a fortnight from the cultivation, and on questioning our guide as to what the creatures would have to eat, he216 seemed to think that enough fodder could be picked up on the journey. ‘You forget the hump,’ said one of our companions. Camels having ‘the hump’ is an old and well-seasoned jest, but their feeding on their humps was news to me. I decided to examine Laura’s hump when next she was unsaddled and see if it held a fortnight’s nutrition, also to take daily observations of its disappearance. ”

“ In the same house resides a little hump-backed woman, a seamstress, and intimate with the female who lives with Fossard."
These particulars were, it may be seen, not sufficiently definite to lead at once to the spot we wished to discover.
A hump-backed woman and yellow curtains with others of embroidered muslin, were not certainly to be found readily in the extent of ground which was to be explored. Perhaps such a combination might be found more than once in the limits prescribed. How many humps, old as well as young, are there not to be found in Paris? ”

“ There seems to be no well-established accommodation for the difference in growth, since the hump produced by it varies considerably in form.
There is no trend from small to large specimens in size of the hump; large and small humps occur in both large and small specimens. Accordingly it seems that the humped condition is developed in the late embryo or early post-embryonic life, and does not later change. ”

“ As I have said, in my young life we were many, many in numbers like you have seen our enemies, the Men, here at times. All through the long, warm days of sun, we ate the grass that grew again as fast as we cropped it. Our humps became big and full of rich fat for the [Pg 148] cold time. Not that I had the hump on my back as a Calf, not needing it as food, for my mother's milk kept my stomach at peace when the winds were cold, and the grass perhaps under a white cover. ”

“ The hump on the abdomen varies considerably in size, and is generally about half as long as the rest of the abdomen and slopes gradually into it. In light individuals the markings of the abdomen are obscure, but usually there is a distinct dark middle stripe, widest near the base of the hump. ”

“ The hump ribs of the bison, which many epicures prefer to any other part of the animal, are the spinous processes of the backbone, and are from eighteen to twenty-four inches in length. They are taken out with a small portion of the flesh adhering to each side, and whether roasted, boiled, or stewed, are certainly very far superior to any part of the flesh of the domestic ox. ”

“ The first thing to do is to cut a deep groove in the bones of the heel, close alongside the base of the calcaneum, also in the bones of the foot at the joints, and in the head of the humerus from the back, so that the iron can fit in snugly, and not create a great, awkward, rounded hump at each of those joints. ”

“ They are beautiful animals, and very different from those in America. Their skin is wonderfully soft and silky. Between their shoulders is a large gristly hump. From their chin down between their fore legs hangs a loose, flabby fold of skin. ”

“ The clumsy shape of the head is accentuated by the hump on the nose, which is due to the excessive development of the nasal septum and of the upper lip, which is long and supple, and adapted to browsing rather than to cropping grass. ”

“ They are plain and smooth, or ornamented with tufts of hair, or fleshy, colored humps; when young, the head and tail are somewhat swollen, and in this state one kind has been described as looking like "little animated dumbbells." When they attain their full size, they prepare to pass into the chrysalis state, and here their methods are equally diverse. ”

“ To get (or have) the hump, verb. phr. (common) .—To be despondent, hurt, put out, down in the mouth (q.v.) . also, to have the hump up or on. For synonyms, see Snaggy.
1599. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe (Grosart, Works, v., 267) . So in his humps about it ... that he had thought to have tumbled his hurrie-currie ... into the sea.
1885. Punch, 10 Jan., p. 24. I had got the ’ump, and no error, along o’ Bill B. and that gal.
1892. Anstey, Model Music-Hall, 43. The company consume what will be elegantly referred to as ‘a bit of booze.’ Aunt Snapper gets the ’ump. ”

“ A more awkward, ungainly beast can hardly be imagined—a shambling collection of humps, bumps, knobs, protruding joints, and sprawling legs seemingly attached to a head and neck in the near foreground. ”

“ The covered side is always against the wind, and before the open front a fire is always burning or smouldering. He does not like the wind, and if it changes, presto! the humpy, too, is changed in a twinkling.
Down in this humpy corner, underneath the pile of bark and skins, he will burrow like a rabbit when he goes to sleep, and from the same place he will provide himself with a weapon when starting off for a hunt.
I have been with him at various times and in sundry places, but remember particularly one tramp with a tall, bushy-headed fellow, whom somebody had appropriately named Long Green. ”

“ It is noticeable that the outlines of hills, and the whole bulk of them at the distance of several miles, become stronger, denser, and more substantial in this autumn atmosphere and in these autumnal tints than in summer. Then they looked blue, misty, and dim. Now they show their great humpbacks more plainly, as if they had drawn nearer to us.
A waste of shrubbery and small trees, such as overruns the borders of the meadows for miles together, looks much more rugged, wild, and savage in its present brown color than when clad in green. ”

“ A constant series of rusty red humps, more beautiful at a distance, no doubt, than to a hungry marine climbing over them expecting at any moment to run into a caco ambush, patches of scenery almost 155equal to the Alps in color, slender pines standing out against the red and tumbled background, here and there a clump of palm-trees to give contrast and a suggestion of peaceful tropical languor, spread before us farther than the eye could see. ”

“ The nomad black fellow makes his primitive humpy, or hut, in a location chosen temporarily, according to his necessities for hunting, fishing, and the like, by cutting a young sapling half through about four feet from the ground, and bending it over to a horizontal position, thus forming a ridge pole, against which boughs and strips of bark are laid. ”

“ ‘If he smiled much more, the ends of his mouth might meet behind,’ she thought: ‘and then I don’t know what would happen to his head! I’m afraid it would come off!’
‘Yes, all his horses and all his men,’ Humpty Dumpty went on. ”

“ "Horses, and all animals indeed, know that there is no place like home; it is a pity that men who consider themselves much wiser, have not the same consideration," thought Humphrey, as the pony trotted along. ”

“ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.’
‘That last line is much too long for the poetry,’ she added, almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her. ”

“ Put a whip-poor-will and a ruby-throated hummer side by side and they certainly do look very little alike—the big whip-poor-will, with its mottled plumage and its short, gaping beak, and the tiny hummingbird with its burnished feathers and its long needle of a bill. ”

“ This bird's nest, as well as his song, is unlike that of our wood-pewee. Instead of a delicate, lichen-covered saucer set lightly upon a horizontal crotch of a dead branch,—our bird's chosen home,—it is a deeper cup, fastened tightly upon a large living branch, and, at least in a cottonwood grove, decorated on the outside with the fluffy cotton from the trees.
Even the humming-bird, who contents himself in this part of the world with a modest hum, heard but a short distance away, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains may almost be called a noisy bird. ”