RUMINANTIA. Wo 



The term Ruminaiitia indicates the singular faculty possessed by these 

 animals of masticating their food a second time, by bringing it back to the 

 mouth after a first deglutition, a faculty depending upon the structure of 

 their stomachs. Of these they always have four, the three first being so 

 disposed that the food may enter into either of them, the oesophagus ter- 

 minating at the point of communication. 



The first and largest is called the paunch (a) ; it receives a large quan- 

 tity of vegetable matters coarsely bruised by a first mastication. From 

 this it passes into the second, called the honeycomb or bonnet, the parietes 

 of which are laminated like a honeycomb. This second stomach, very 

 small and globular, seizes the food, moistens and compresses it into little 

 pellets, which afterwards successively ascend to the mouth to be re- 

 chewed. The animal remains at rest during this operation, which lasts 

 until all the food first taken into the paunch has been submitted to it. The 

 aliment thus re-masticated descends directly into the third stomach, called 

 the leafiet (feuillet), on account of its parietes being longitudinally lami- 

 nated, or like the leaves of a book ; and thence to the fourth or the cail- 

 lette, the sides of which are wrinkled, and which is the true organ of di- 

 gestion, analogous to the simple stomach of animals in general. In the 

 young Ruminantia, or so long as they subsist on the milk of the mother, 

 the caillette is the largest of the four. The paunch is only developed by 

 receiving increased quantities of grass, which finally give it an enormous 

 volume. The intestinal canal is very long, though there are but few en- 

 largements in the great intestines. The ciscum is likewise long and to- 

 lerably smooth. The fat of ruminating animals hardens more by cooling 

 than that of other quadrupeds, and even becomes brittle. It is called tal- 

 low. Their mamma are placed between the thighs. 



f^ (a) The paunch is in latin called rumen, or ingluvies; in this bag the food is 

 macerated after very slight mastication; it is divided externally into two saccular 

 portions, and its inner coat is covered with a vast number of papillae : it is in this 

 cavity that all those morbid concretions are found, of which naturalists give us the 

 descriptions, such as the haiiy balls of the cow, the spongy balls of the chamois, the 

 Bezoar stones of the wild goats, &c. The second stomach is called the honey-comb 

 bag, or king's hood, and in latin reticulum, which is smaller than the other, and has 

 its internal coat arranged into small cells. From the reticulum the food is passed 

 back into the mouth, by means of an anti-peristaltic motion of this second stomach, 

 through the oesophagus. But this latter process is effected slowly, and during the 

 time that the animal is at its ease. After being the second time masticated, the food 

 is once more swallowed, that is to say, it is passed through the aesophagus from the 

 mouth. Now, as this latter tube communicates with three of the stomachs, the 

 contents of the mouth may be sent into any of the three, at the discretion of the 

 animal; and, after the second mastication, it is always passed into the third stomach, 

 which is usually termed the omasum, or manyplies: this stomach is the smallest sto- 

 mach, and resembles a roUed-up hedgehog; its internal coat has broad duplicatures. 

 Here the food undergoes some change, whilst it remains only a short time, and is 

 then finally passed into the fourth stomach, the ahomasum, which, in its structure, 

 and particularly in respect of its villous lining membrane, and in its function, exact- 

 ly corresponding with the same organ in man and the other mammalia. — Enc. Ed. 



