ON GENERATION. 195 



in pursuit to gratify it. But I shall have more to say on this 

 subject in my treatise on the Loves, Lusts, and Sexual Acts of 

 Animals. I return to the matter we have in hand. 



EXERCISE THE SEVENTH. 



Of the abdomen of the common fowl and of other birds. 



From the external orifice proceeding through the vulva we 

 come to the uterus of the fowl, in which the egg is perfected, 

 surrounded with the white and covered with its shell. But 

 before speaking of the situation and connections of this part it 

 seems necessary to premise a few words on the particular ana- 

 tomy of the abdomen of birds. For I have observed that the 

 stomach, intestines, and other viscera of the feathered kinds 

 were otherwise placed in the abdomen, and differently consti- 

 tuted, than they are in quadrupeds. 



Almost all birds are provided with a double stomach ; one of 

 which is the crop, the other the stomach, properly so called. 

 In the former the food is stored and undergoes preparation, in 

 the latter it is dissolved and converted into chyme. 1 The familiar 

 names of the two stomachs of birds are the crop or craw, and 

 the gizzard. In the crop the entire grain, &c. that is swal- 

 lowed is moistened, macerated, and softened, and then it is sent 

 on to the stomach that it may there be crushed and commi- 

 nuted. For this end almost all the feathered tribes swallow 

 sand, pebbles, and other hard substances, which they preserve 

 in their stomachs, nothing of the sort being found in the crop. 

 Now the stomach in birds consists of two extremely thick and 

 powerful muscles (in the smaller birds they appear both fleshy 

 and tendinous), so placed that, like a pair of millstones con- 

 nected by means of hinges, they may grind and bruise the 

 food; the place of teeth, which birds want, being supplied by 

 the stones which they swallow. In this way is the food reduced 

 and turned into chyme 1 ; and then by compression (just as we 



1 [The word in the original is chyle, for which, in accordance with modern views, 

 chyme is substituted. ED.] 



