KUM1NATIUN IN THE OX. 101 



not complete, since it seems to be proved that, though the 

 water, on drinking, passes directly into the third and fourth 

 stomachs, it passes also into the first and second stomachs. 

 The aliment, however, after the thorough mastication and in- 

 salivation which constitute rumination, being now a soft, some- 

 what uniform pulp, under the impulse of deglutition, passes 

 through the first part of the canal with much the same facility 

 as the milk in the calf, and, creating no distention such as is 

 sufficient to open the canal freely, reaches the third stomach. 



The preliminary stage of the process of stomach-digestion 

 in the ox proceeds nearly in the following manner : the food, 

 unless it be of a pulpy character, passes, after a first imperfect 

 mastication, wholly into the first and second stomachs ; if it 

 be of a pulpy character, it goes, after this slight mastication, 

 in part into all the four stomachs. When the coarser food 

 which had passed into the first and second stomachs has 

 become, with the aid of the saliva that is continually swal- 

 lowed in the interval between eating and ruminating, suffi- 

 ciently macerated and dissolved, it is thrown by the contrac- 

 tion of these two stomachs, assisted by the action of the 

 abdominal muscles and diaphragm, into the demi-canal ; this 

 canal then contracts, and, moulding the pulp that has passed 

 into it to the shape of its narrowed and shortened form, con- 

 verts it into a pellet ; the canal next throws this pellet into 

 the gullet, by the inverted action of which the pellet is trans- 

 mitted to the mouth for rumination that is to say, for a 

 second mastication and insalivation. In the second deglutition 

 the ruminated aliment passes by the derni-canal chiefly into 

 the third stomach, but a portion of it passes at the same time 

 into the first and second stomachs. That portion of the 

 ruminated aliment that arrives at the third stomach, after the 

 changes effected on it there, passes into the fourth or proper 

 stomach, where true ventricular digestion takes place, The 



