PRODUCTION OF MILK. |4J 



are in a high state of health, a perfect digestion, and yon have an 

 animal which is capable of converting the greatest amount of 

 assimilable matter, matter which is calculated to make beef or to 

 make milk — that that animal possibly can so convert. But in 

 man}' exceptional cases (to come back to the point where I went 

 off',) you will find that in consequence of a fever or preceding 

 gastritis, there are patches of that fourth or digestive stomach 

 which are incapable of pouring out gastric juice, and therefore 

 incapable of using up and forming into assimilable matter those 

 portions of food which have gone through the three preceding 

 stomachs. Here is a difficulty, and is the main reason why the 

 marks which I have formerly described are not in all cases abso- 

 lute guides. I have dissected many females where this difficulty 

 has occurred, in which cases, notwithstanding the presence of 

 those exterior marks which indicate admirable qualities as milkers 

 and beef makers, they have failed to milk and to lay on flesh 

 according to the family or strain of blood they belonged to and 

 as their form and external marks would have led a person to 

 believe that they would. It was due to the fact of inflammation 

 in the fourth stomach, or the failure of the third stomach, or book, 

 to perform its function ; for it is in vain that the fourth stomach 

 performs its digestive function if the book, or grinding-mill, fails 

 to perform its duty of disintegrating the matters which the cow 

 has taken into her. It is very often the case that an examination 

 of the leaves of the book will show that, instead of having the 

 moist condition which belongs to them, one or more are dry. 



pillars of tho canal' then prepared food, as soft mashes, &c, ought when first swallowed 

 to enter the omasum, and fluids would also take the same course, whereas, wo have 

 many proofs, afforded by experiments, that these find their way into the first and second 

 stomachs. Besides which, the pillars do not form ' the floor of the oesophageal canal' 

 as stated by Mr. Touatt and others, but the side of the channel; and if they are placr/i in 

 contact, then there is no passage or duct behind them ; in short, the errors of description 

 have arisen from studying these structures on the dissecting table alone and not in their 

 natural situation. Our opinion of rumination receives further confirmation from the fact 

 that many ruminants, of which the camel is an example, do not possess a reticulum; 

 therefore in such animals the rumen must propel the ingesta upwards. We could 

 advance many other facts to negative the general belief, but it is unnecessary to do so 

 on this occasion. It may be asked, What function wo ascribe to the reticulum ? We 

 answer, that it supplies the third stomach with aliment suited for digestion; this it 

 receives from the rumen by the ordinary peristaltic action that is continually going on 

 in that viscus, and passes it at intervals through the aperture situated at tho inferior 

 part of tho oesophageal canal. And we are further of opinion that the before-men- 

 tioned pillars perform an office analagous to a sphincter, by drawing the opening which 

 communicates with tho omasum towards the oesophagus, and thus close it against any 

 coarse or indigestible matter that is presented by the reticulum." S. L. a. 



