GNAWING ANIMALS — RODENTS 161 



from 9 to 12. It then fills its stomach pack-full 

 and keeps it full while partial digestion proceeds 

 rapidly ; the half-digested food passes down a long 

 narrow canal, and enters a kind of second stomach ; 

 when both are replete it ceases eating, retires some 

 distance from its feeding ground, and spends the 

 major part of the day in perfect quiescence, digesting 

 perfectly this store of food. During this period 

 certain portions of food in the form of imperfectly 

 exhausted, soft, mucilaginous pellets are extruded 

 from time to time and received by the animal directly 

 into its mouth on extrusion from the rectum ; they 

 are swallowed without anything deserving to be 

 called mastication — a movement or two of the jaws 

 — and passed a second time through its digestive 

 canal. This continues to go on until I imagine the 

 whole of the food has thus passed through, and I 

 think it is not till then that the pellets of the ordinary 

 dung assume their ultimate form, size and con- 

 sistence, that is, hard and almost perfectly desiccated.'' 

 Thus the same author says : '' This delicately clean, 

 odourless and elegant creature has one unpleasing 

 habit ! it eats its own dung, even when supplied 

 with abundance of acceptable and favourite food. 

 Not only does it eat the soft pellets above referred 

 to, but it undoubtedly eats also, to a limited extent, 

 the perfectly digested and desiccated pellets of its 

 ordinary dung." 



Such was Mr. Drane's interest in his pets that 

 his house and household goods appear to have been 

 abandoned to them. Speaking of one of his tame 

 hares, he says : " It likes to be with me, and delights 



11 



