RUMINANTIA. 175 



SECTION XXI. 



EIGHTH ORDER. RUMINANTIA. (Lat. rumen, a stomach or 



paunch.) 



RUMINATING, or CUD-CHEWING ANIMALS. 



This pre-eminently useful order includes the oxen, sheep and 

 goats, deer, giraffes and camels. They were very anciently 

 recognized as a separate group, and taken as a whole are ex- 

 tremely compact and well defined. The camels alone present 

 some slight exceptions to the general character. Each foot ends in 

 two toes, covered with two sharp pointed horny hoofs, fitting each 

 other as though a single round hoof had been cleft in the middle. 

 Behind these are two small spurs, or rudiments of lateral toes. 

 Hence they are called animals with " divided, or bifurcate hoofs." 

 The RUMINANTS are well known as herbivorous. Their name 

 indicates the singular faculty which they have of masticating or 

 chewing their food a second time, and by which they are special- 

 ly distinguished from all other animals. For this purpose they 

 are furnished with four stomachs, or one divided into four dis- 

 tinct chambers or cavities, each having a distinct office to per- 

 form. The first is the rumen, or paunch, in full grown animals 

 the largest of all, and covered with papilla, or flattened warts. 

 Into this passes the hard and coarsely masticated food from the 

 beginning of the muscular canal, which is at the end of the seso- 

 phagus or gullet. From the rumen, the rudely bruised herbage 

 is transmitted into the second stomach, called the reticulum, or 

 hood, which is beautifully divided into hexagonal cells, like a 

 honeycomb. Water is received from the mouth into this second 

 cavity. The food is here moistened and moulded into small 

 balls or pellets, and by a rapid and inverted action of the muscles 

 of the gullet is propelled into the mouth, where it is more per- 

 fectly masticated, mixed with fluid and again swallowed, passing 

 now into the psalterium, omasus, or manyplies, the third stomach. 

 The inner coat of this division is set with parallel longitudinal 

 lamina, or folds, resembling the leaves of a book. In the sheep 

 it has forty, in the ox as many as a hundred of these folds. In 

 these plates the superfluous fluid, which might otherwise have too 

 much diluted the gastric juice, is absorbed ; and the sub-divided 

 cud passes gradually into the fourth and last, or red stomach, 

 (abomasus,) which is large and pear shaped, and wrinkled and 

 hairy, as to its inner surface. This is the true digesting stom- 

 ach, and in the young, while sucking, is the largest of the four. 



