NATURAL HISTORY. 169 



Others, filled with pasturage, gazing sat, 

 Or bedward ruminating." MILTON. 



disposed to imagine that rule and compass had been employed in their formation. 

 These alternate bands are narrow, parallel, and exactly separated; they extend 

 not only orer the body, but the head, thighs, and legs, and evea over (he ears and 

 tail They follow so exactly the contours of the different parts, enlarging more or 

 less according to the development of the muscles, and the roundness of the different 

 forms, that they exhibit the entire figure in the most advantageous point of view. 

 In the female these bands are alternately black and white, in the male they arc 

 black and yellow, but always of a lively and brilliant tint. They also rest upon a 

 ground of short, fine, and copious hairs, whose lustre considerably augments the 

 general beauty of the colours,* 



ORDER IX. RUMINANTIA. 



507. Wliy are the animals of the ninth order called ruminants f 



Because they chew again the food which has been swallowed, 

 slightly masticated. The word is derived from the Latin rumino, 

 from rumen, the cud. 



508. Why do numerous herbivorous animals "chew the cud?" 



Because in a state of nature they are liable to be surprised 

 and preyed upon by their carnivorous enemies while feeding. 

 They are therefore endowed with stomachs capable of receiving a 

 large quantity of food in a crude state, and with the power of 

 returning it again, to be brought under the action of the teeth, 

 when the animal has retired to a place of comparative security. 



509. The class of ruminants feed on the coarser kind o* herbage where they are 

 in abundance ; but the actual nutritious matter is small in quantity compared with 

 the mass. There is, therefore, an obvious necessity for a more complex apparatus to 

 extract the smaller proportion of matter capable of being animalized ; hence the 

 various preparations for digestion. When the mass is digested, the nutritious part 

 is still small in proportion to the whole ; and, to permit that smaller part to be pre- 

 pared and carried into the system, the intestinal canal must be long and complex, 

 offering resistance to the rapid descent of the food, and giving it lodgment : and 

 thus there is always a correspondence between the complication of the stomach and 

 the length of the intestines, and between both and the nature of the food. 



It is further remarkable, that when animals of the same species lire in different 

 eiimates, where there is more or less abundance of vegetabk food, there is v\ 



Buffon. 

 8 



