130 PHYSIOLOGY AT THE FAKM. 



oil into emulsion, till the chyme reaches the duodenum, has the 

 advantage of retarding the too free absorption of sugar and 

 emulsified oil into the general circulation, and confining that 

 absorption to the vessels which are to carry these combustible 

 substances straight to the lungs to be burnt off in the main- 

 tenance of animal temperature. In short, had the stomach 

 completed the preparation of sugar and emulsified oil, these 

 substances, being soluble, would have passed too freely into 

 the capillary blood-vessels of that organ, and would have been 

 conveyed to the lungs faster than they could have been burnt 

 up, so that the residue would have deteriorated the general 

 mass of the arterial blood by admixture therewith. As the 

 case is, however, it has been always a cause for surprise that 

 so much sugar and emulsified oil should be absorbed from the 

 alimentary canal in animals like the ox without any evidence 

 of their general presence throughout the mass of the blood. 

 The explanation of this circumstance seems to be afforded 

 jointly by the retardation of their absorption and by their 

 rapid transmission after absorption to the seat of their com- 

 bustion. While, then, such soluble parts of the contents of 

 the small intestines as the sugar and the emulsified oil, are 

 absorbed by the capillary blood-vessels in the mucous mem- 

 brane probably of the stomach itself, and certainly of the 

 upper part of the small intestines the dissolved albuminoid 

 constituents of the food are taken up by the lacteals in the villi 

 of the same part of the intestines. 



It has been supposed, in the ox and other vegetable-feeders, 

 that the contents of the intestinal tube, after yielding the sugar 

 and emulsified oil to the capillary blood-vessels in the higher 

 region and the soluble albumen to the lacteals, undergo a 

 second digestion in the caecum analogous to the stomach- 

 digestion, and thus that any remaining albuminoid matter 

 is reduced and rendered soluble previous to a new exercise of 



