GROWTH AND FOOD OF ANIMALS. 153 



little impression was made upon potatoes, parsnips, and other 

 vegetable substances. On the contrary, in the ruminating 

 animals, as the sheep, the oxj &/c., he discovered that their 

 gastric juice speedily dissolved vegetables, but made no im- 

 pression on beef, mutton, and other animal bodies. From 

 these last experiments, it appears, that the different tribes of 

 animals are not less distinguished by their external figure, and 

 by their manners, than by the quality and powers of their 

 gastric juices. Dogs are unable to digest vegetables, and 

 sheep and oxen cannot digest animal substances. As the 

 gastric juice of the human stomach is capable of dissolving, 

 nearly with equal ease, both animals and vegetables, this cir- 

 cumstance affords a strong, and almost an irresistible proof, 

 that nature originally intended man to feed promiscuously 

 upon both. 



Live animals, as long as the vital principle remains in them, 

 are not affected by the solvent powers of the stomach. 

 ' Hence it is,' Mr. Hunter remarks, ' that we find animals of 

 various kinds living in the stomach, or even hatched and bred 

 there ; but the moment that any of these lose the living prin- 

 ciple, they become subject to the digestive powers of the 

 stomach. If it were possible, for example, for a man's hand 

 to be introduced into the stomach of a living animal, and kept 

 there for some considerable time, it would be found, that the 

 dissolvent powers of the stomach could have no effect upon 

 it ; but if the same hand were separated from the body, and 

 introduced into the same stomach, we should then find that 

 the stomach would immediately act upon it. Indeed, if this 

 were not the case, we should find that the stomach- itself ought 

 to have been made of indigestible materials ; for if the living 

 principle was not capable of preserving animal substances 

 from undergoing that process, the stomach itself would be 

 digested. But we find, on the contrary, that the stomach, 

 which, at one instant, that is, while possessed of the living 

 principle, is capable of resisting the digestive powers which 

 it contained, the next moment, viz. when deprived of the 

 living principle, is itself capable of being digested, either by 

 the digestive powers of other stomachs, or by the remains of 

 that power which it had of digesting other things.' 



When bodies are opened some time after death, a consid- 

 erable aperture is frequently found at the greatest extremity 

 of the stomach. 4 In these cases,' says Mr. Hunter, ' the 

 contents of the stomach are generally found loose in the 

 cavity of the abdomen, about the spleen and diaphragm In 



