Natural History 473 



they could not be surprised from behind. There, at leisure, they 

 re-chewed their hasty meal. 



The so-called stomach of a typical ruminant, such as sheep or 

 cow, consists of four chambers. The first is the capacious paunch 

 or rumen, the internal surface of which is thickly beset with tag- 

 like processes, suggesting velvet pile. It is here that the grass 

 is stored; it is acted upon by the salivary juice which has followed 

 it down, and there is also some bacterial fermentation. The 

 second chamber, the honeycomb bag or reticulum, is marked by a 

 hexagonal pattern, and it rarely contains more than sappy fluid. 

 The third chamber, the manyplies or psalterium, has numerous 

 plaits filling up its cavity, so that the food has to pass through 

 a kind of filter. The fourth chamber, the reed or abomasum, is 

 the seat of gastric digestion. In fact, it is the true stomach, for 

 the preceding three chambers turn out to be elaborations of the 

 lower end of the gullet or oasophagus. This is known by the 

 minute structure of their walls, for there is no confusing the 

 non-glandular gullet region with the very glandular stomach 

 region. 



What happens in rumination? The cow, lying slightly on 

 one side, returns boluses of food from the paunch to the mouth, 

 where they are very thoroughly masticated and moistened with 

 saliva. If we watch a cow we can see these boluses or rounded 

 masses of vegetable matter travelling up the gullet with consider- 

 able rapidity. After the thorough chewing, the food is re-swal- 

 lowed and passes down for the second time; the muscles of the 

 gullet working in a manner the exact opposite of that exhibited 

 when the boluses pass up. On the second descent the food skips 

 the paunch and the honeycomb bag, there being automatic 

 arrangements for preventing entrance, and travels along a 

 groove into the manyplies. Filtering through this third cham- 

 ber, it reaches the true stomach and is subjected to gastric 

 digestion. 



Overloading a stomach sometimes leads to vomiting an 



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