257 



This stomach is nearly spherical, seven inches in diameter, of a 

 honeycombed appearance and glandular structure. The exit towards 

 the third stomach is placed very near the entrance from the first, and 

 is only five eighths of an inch in diameter. 



The third cavity is also spherical, and two inches in diameter, with 

 an aperture only three eighths of an inch in diameter, leading to a 

 fourth stomach. This cavity is nearly cylindrical, like an intestine, 

 but rather widest, measuring nearly three inches at its further ex- 

 tremity, and fourteen inches and a half in length. 



The pylorus, which is the boundary of this stomach, is only one 

 fourth of an inch in diameter. The dilated cavity into which this 

 opens has been considered by Cuvier and Hunter as belonging also 

 to the stomach ; but Mr. Home observes, that it should rather be 

 considered as duodenum, since the common duct of the liver and 

 pancreas opens into it. 



The common porpoise, the grampus, and piked whale, have also 

 four cavities constituting the stomach ; but in the bottle-nosed whale 

 of Dale there are as many as six : the general structure, however, is 

 the same ; and in all the whale tribe there is but one cavity lined with 

 a cuticle, as in the camel and bullock. In all of them the second 

 cavity has a very glandular structure, and in all the third is very 

 small. The fourth stomach also, in each of them, has a smooth in- 

 ternal surface, with orifices of glands opening into its cavity. 



The first stomach appears not to be a mere reservoir, since the food 

 undergoes a considerable change in it. The flesh is here entirely 

 separated from the bones, of which several handfuls were found with- 

 out the smallest remains of the fish to which they belonged ; the ori- 

 fices into the second and third stomachs being too small to admit the 

 bones to pass. The bones must consequently be reduced to a jelly in 

 the first stomach, but require a longer time for the completion of 

 that process than the fleshy parts. 



The second cavity is that which Mr. Hunter supposed to be the 

 true digesting stomach ; but Mr. Home, notwithstanding his defer- 

 ence for every opinion of Mr. Hunter's, is of a contrary opinion, from 

 considering that any further cavities would in that case be super- 

 fluous, after the complete formation of chyle, and from observing 

 that the last cavity is that which, in its structure, bears the closest 

 analogy to the simple human stomach, in which the process of form- 

 ing chyle is certainly completed. From a comparison also of these 

 stomachs with the fourth of the camel, it appeared that only the 

 lower portion of that cavity is the stomach, in which the chyle is 

 formed, and that its upper or plicated portion serves only to prepare 

 the food for the process of digestion. In the same manner also in 

 the bullock, although there is not the slightest contraction or sub- 

 division between the upper and lower portions, Mr. Home considers 

 the plicated part as a mere preparatory organ, and the lower as that 

 which secretes the proper gastric juice. 



As the stomachs of the camel, bullock, and horse, form principal 

 links in the gradation from the most complex ruminating stomachs 



