RESEARCHES OX RUMINATION, OR CHEWING THE CUD. 277 



no further than the many-plies ; but a soft mucous membrane, which 

 has the property of curdling milk, and that of the calf is used for this 

 purpose in cheese-making. 



It is important to observe, that, from the inlet of the paunch or first 

 stomach, from the termination of the gullet, near the junction of the 

 second and third stomachs, there runs to the third stomach a groove, 

 which I shall call the cud-duct, with the first stomach on its left, and 

 the second on its right. This cud-duct has thick prominent margins, 

 which can be brought to meet so as to form a tube, and constitute a 

 continuation of the gullet across the second into the third stomach. 

 This duct was ascertained by M. Flourens to remain always open, even 

 when the gullet inlet of the first stomach was closed. 



The process of chewing the cud has recently been explained with 

 great minuteness by M. Flourens, of Paris, who killed a number of 

 sheep while in the act, for the purpose of investigating the facts, which 

 have not been well understood by Aristotle, Perronet, Daubentoii, 

 Camper, Ilaller, Chabert, Foggia^ and Bourgelat, and we may say the 

 same of Grew, Monro, John Hunter, Blumenbach, and Carus. 



When an ox or a sheep first swallows grass or other herbage, it passes 

 chiefly into the paunch, but both partly, immediately and successively, 

 into the second stomach ; but in the instance of liquids, such as broth, 

 a portion always passes into each of the four stomachs immediately ; 

 the only opening into the third stomach being very strait, and capable, 

 also, of being quite closed, so as to prevent the passage of anything 

 coarse. The reason why liquids pass into the third and fourth stomachs 

 is, that unless the gullet -inlet into the first stomach is expanded by a 

 morsel of solid food, the cud-duct is more open to receive the liquid, 

 and for the same reason, the cud-duct is prevented, by the expansion of 

 the gullet-inlet, from admitting solid food. 



In the process of common vomiting, the contents of the stomach are, 

 by the action of the midribs and the muscles of the belly, ejected in a 

 mass ; but in chewing the cud, there is only a small rounded pellet 

 brought up into the mouth, so that the process is in this very different 

 from vomiting. Bourgelat denied the existence of the pellet, and Dau- 

 benton says it is formed by the second stomach. M. Flourens ascer- 

 tained, beyond all question, that the pellet or cud, (which is only a dif- 

 ferent way of spelling quid,) is detached from the mass of aliment in 

 the paunch, by the latter contracting and pressing the mass upwards 

 towards the adjacent inlets of the paunch, the many-plies, and the 



