182 THE SHEPHERD'S MANUAL. 



4th. The omasum completes the maceration or reduction of the 

 food to a sufficiently fine condition for digestion, by pressing it 

 between its leaves. 



5th. The abomasum is the true digestive stomach, and finally 

 dissolves the food by its gastric secretion. 



In these processes the cesophagean canal performs a peculiar func- 

 tion. The ordinary food of the ruminating animal is coarse in 

 texture, aud when swallowed is bulky. When it enters into the 

 stomach and meets the opening of the oesophagean canal, it forces 

 open, by its bulk, the muscular lips of which the opening is com- 

 posed, and drops partly into the first, and partly into the second 

 stomach. M. Flourens has satisfied himself, by careful experi- 

 ments upon a living sheep, that when the animal ruminates, a por- 

 tion of the food swallowed previously and now contained in the 

 first and second stomachs which are really one is forced by a 

 contraction of the stomach into the oesophagean canal, and this then 

 contracting, closes all the other openings except that of the gullet, 

 and at the same time compresses the morsel of food into a pellet or 

 ball, which is immediately forced by the upward muscular con- 

 traction of the gullet into the mouth. When it has been chewed 

 and mingled with the copious secretion of saliva which takes place 

 during rumination, it is again swallowed. Being now softened 

 and in a semi-liquid condition, it passes over the lips of the open- 

 ing of the canal, without forcing them apart, into the second 

 stomach, and enters the third stomach ; a small portion of it only 

 escaping into the first and second stomachs. When fine or semi- 

 liquid food is first swallowed, it follows exactly the same course, 

 the same being true of water when drank. From the third stom- 

 ach the food passes on to the fourth stomach to be finally disposed 

 of. It has been found that the pellets of food, returned to the 

 mouth for rumination, are of the precise size, shape, and form of 

 the portion of the oesophagean canal between the first and third 

 stomachs. Sheep have been dissected with these pellets ready 

 formed in the canal for transmission to the mouth. 



The intestines of the sheep are of great length, being twenty- 

 eight times longer than its body. In the duodenum, which is the 

 upper portion of the intestines that directly communicates with 

 the lower orifice of the stomach, the partially digested mass of 

 food undergoes still further changes. As it passes from the stom- 

 ach it is termed chyme. In the duodenum the chyme is mingled 

 with the bile, which comes from the liver, and the pancreatic juice, 

 a secretion of the pancreas, or " sweet-bread," and becomes fitted 



