400 PROPERTIES AND FUNCTIONS 



contents into a tube or duct which leads directly to the 

 blood vessels, where the chyle is mixed with and con- 

 verted into blood. The blood is now conveyed to the 

 heart, and this immediately contracting propels its eon- 

 tents into the lungs, where it undergoes important 

 changes, which we shall presently describe. 



All animals do not eat of the same kind of food. 

 Some feed upon flesh, others upon vegetables, and others 

 upon a mixture of both. Man is omnivorous. He can 

 live either upon vegetables or flesh, and his stomach is 

 accordingly adapted to that purpose. The formation of 

 the stomach, and the kind of food which animals eat, 

 seem to have a great influence over their manners and 

 disposition. The lion, the tiger, the hyena, &c, live 

 entirely upon animal food. Their stomachs are small 

 and short, their food is digested rapidly, and the cravings 

 of their appetite necessarily create in them a ravenous 

 and rapacious disposition. Their cruelty, therefore^ 

 seems to be the necessary effect of the peculiar organic 

 structure with which nature has endowed them. Vege- 

 table food contains a much less quantity of nutritious 

 substance than animal. It must require, therefore, a 

 much larger quantity of it to nourish and sustain the 

 body, and it requires a longer time for it to digest.. 

 Those animals, therefore, that live entirely upon vegeta- 

 bles, have large and capacious stomachs, and their dis- 

 positions are characterized by mildness, complacency 

 and innocence. Those animals that live upon flesh and 

 vegetables combined, have not the small stomach of the 

 carnivorous tribe, or the capacious ones of the herbivo- 

 rous. In their dispositions they partake not of the cruelty 

 of the one nor the mildness of the other. 



All ruminating animals, or such as chew the cud, are 

 furnished with no less than four stomachs. The food 

 after it is masticated passes into the first stomach, where 

 it remains till it is partially digested. It is then thrown 

 by the voluntary efforts of the animal into the mouth, 

 where it undergoes a second chewing. The second time 

 it is swallowed instead of passing into the first stomach 

 it goes into the second, and so oji to the third and fourth. 

 The ruminating order of animals are distinguished for 



