NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HAMSTER. 477 



torn by its contents, which often present rough or sharp sur- 

 faces. Between their two attachments these bladders, when 

 empty, extend like two loose narrow canals ; but when full, 

 they are oval, 2j inches long, and 1 J broad, wherefore their 

 periphery, where it is widest, measures about 5 J inches. — 

 When these pouches are filled with food, or blown up by the 

 animal, its head and neck look as broad again. I scarcely 

 need say that these pouches present the convenient means of 

 carrying home food; they contain about 1| ounce of corn 

 each, or a corresponding quantity of green fodder. The ani- 

 mal empties them by stroking them from behind with its fore 

 paws ; the muscle which has been mentioned perhaps facili- 

 tates this operation by its contractions. The anatomical 

 characters do not, however, show the possibility of these 

 pouches being contracted in the manner of the urinary blad- 

 der ; nor could anything like peristaltic motion be discovered 

 in fresh-killed specimens, which were still convulsed. They 

 may serve as a sort of craw or first stomach, as in almost 

 every hamster that has been dissected, there were found in 

 them a few grains in a state of maceration ; and 1 have also 

 observed that the hamster fills its pouches with animal food, 

 of which he never lays in a store at home. However, the 

 animal often eats the grain just as it finds it, and therefore 

 this use of the pouches is not absolute. The stomach is dou- 

 ble ; the first or left one, into which the oesophagus opens, 

 offering nothing peculiar in its form, except that the mouth 

 of the oesophagus is situated at the right extremity of it, which 

 is in the mesial line, whilst the whole of that stomach is situ- 

 ated to the left of it. The valve of the cardia or oesophagus 

 shuts so closely upwards, that the stomachs may be inflated 

 from the pylorus, and dried in that state, after tying the duo- 

 denum, without a ligature being put round the oesophagus. — 

 This is a sure proof of the hamster not being a ruminating 

 animal, although his stomach is double. Near the cardia the 

 first stomach opens to the right into the second, which is more 

 rounded, reddish, smoother and more shining outside, and has 

 thicker coats than the first ; it is situated to the right of the 

 mesial line, rather higher than the first, and is a little smaller. 

 The two unite by the first being, as it were, inserted into the 

 second, into which it sends two processes, and there is a ru- 

 dimentary valve between them, which cannot, however, effec- 

 tually prevent the regurgitation of the chyme, which is much 

 more fluid in the first than in the second stomach. The ru- 

 ga are much more prominent in the first than in the second, 

 which, on its right and upper side, communicates with the 

 duodenum, without the intervention of a valve. The intestine 



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