422 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
S1zE.—Head and body, from 18 to 20 inches ; height, 8 to ro inches ; 
weight, 7 to ro lbs. 
This little animal, according to Hodgson’s account of it (a most 
interesting one, which will be ‘found in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal,’ vol. xvi. May 1847), seems to have the disposition 
of the peccary as well as the resemblance ; it goes, he says, in herds, 
and the males fearlessly attack intruders, “charging and cutting the 
naked legs of their human or other attackers with a speed that baffles 
the eyesight, and a spirit which their straight sharp laniaries renders 
really perplexing, if not dangerous.” 
RUMINANTIA—THE RUMINANTS 
These differ materially from the foregoing section of the Artiodactyla 
by the construction of their digestive organs. Instead of the food 
being masticated and passed at once into the stomach, each mouthful 
is but slightly bruised and passed into the paunch, whence at leisure 
it is regurgitated into the mouth to be chewed. For such an operation 
the machinery is of course more complicated than in other animals, and 
I must therefore attempt to describe briefly and as clearly as I can the 
construction of the ruminating stomach. ‘Taking the ox as a typical 
specimen, we find four well-defined chambers varying in size. The 
first of these is the rumen or paunch, in which the unmasticated food 
is stored ; it is a large sac partly bent on itself, and narrowing towards 
its junction with the cesophagts or gullet, and the entrance into the 
second chamber. It is lined with a mucous membrane, which is 
covered with a pile or villous surface, and this membrane is what is sold 
in butchers’ shops as tripe. From this bag (the paunch) in the act of 
rumination a certain portion of the food is ejected into the second 
chamber, which is termed the reticulum (i.e. a little net) from the 
peculiar arrangement of its inner or mucous surface, which is lined with 
a network of shallow hexagonal cells. The functions of this receptacle 
are probably the forming of the food into a bolus, and by a spasmodic 
contraction the forcing of it back through the gullet into the mouth for 
mastication. Here it is well chewed, and, being thoroughly mixed with 
saliva passes back; on being swallowed in a soft pulpy state it passes 
the groove or valve communicating with the chamber from which it 
issued, and goes straight into the psalterium or manyplies, as the third 
chamber is called. This is globular, but most of its interior is filled up 
with folds like the leaves of a book, more or less unequal. It is not 
quite clear what the peculiar functions of this chamber are, but the semi- 
liquid food, passing through it, goes into the proper stomach (abomasum 
