THE GIZZARD 13 



could not create any kind of disturbance in the giz- 

 zard. ' So he was curious to see what would happen 

 if sharp and cutting bodies were introduced. 'We 

 know,' he says, 'how easily little pieces of glass, 

 broken up by pounding, tear the flesh. Well, hav- 

 ing shattered a pane of glass, I selected some pieces 

 about the size of a pea and wrapped them in a play- 

 ing card so that they would not lacerate the gullet 

 in their passage. Thus prepared, I made a cock 

 swallow them, well knowing that the covering of card 

 would break on its entrance into the stomach and 

 leave the glass free to act with all its points and 

 sharp edges.' 



"With all those little pieces of glass in its stom- 

 ach," said Jules, "the bird must surely have died." 



"Not a bit of it. The bird would have come out 

 all right if the experimenter had not sacrificed it to 

 see the result. The cock was killed at the end of 

 twenty hours. 'All the pieces of glass were in the 

 gizzard,' the abbot tells us, 'but all their sharp edges 

 and points had disappeared so completely that, hav- 

 ing put these fragments on my palm, I could rub 

 them hard with the other hand without inflicting the 

 slightest wound. 



" 'The reader,' he goes on, 'must be curious to 

 learn the effect produced on the gizzard by these 

 sharp-pointed bodies that rolled around there un- 

 ceasingly until they lost their keen edges and sharp 

 points. Opening the cock's gizzard, I examined mi- 

 nutely the inside skin after having well washed and 

 cleaned it. I even separated it from the gizzard, 



