INTRODUCTION. 29 



Strangely various secretions. The organs of digestion in neat cattle 

 are more complicated than in the hor«v', or in man ; for the latter have 

 only one stomach, but these have four stomachs. This, probably, 

 renders them more liable, particularly in their present domesticated 

 state, to diseases of the digestive organs. 



The gullet is a thick fleshy canal that receives the food from the 

 mouth, in its passage into the first stomach, and having afterwards 

 returned it to the mouth for the purpose of re-mastication, once more 

 receives it, and conveys it into a canal at its base. 



The grass is cropped, and having been slightly chcu^ed, is covered 

 by the mucus of the mouth, and formed by the tongue into a kind of 

 pellet that can be swallowed. It then passes down the gullet, and 

 arrives at this canal. If this canal were pursued it would lead on to 

 the manypll.es, or third stomach; but its floor is curiously constructed. 

 It is formed of two rounded muscular bands, which may be held to- 

 gether or divided — which may form a tube through which a liquid 

 will scarcely penetrate, and so carry on the food to the third stomach, 

 or which may divide and suffer it to fall through into the rumen or 

 paunch, of the roof of which, and also of the reticulum, or second 

 stomach, these bands form a part. 



The pellet of food passes down, and partly by its own weight, and 

 assisted also by the contraction of the muscles of the gullet, and its 

 course also in some measure depending on the pleasure of the animal, 

 it breaks through the floor and enters into the paunch; and there it 

 remains, and pellet after pellet descends until the pauncli is nearly or' 

 quite filled. The animal then lies comfortably down. The food has 

 all this time been macerating in the paunch, the inner membrane of 

 which is lined with numerous little prominences or capillary glands, 

 that secrete an alkaline fluid, which prevents or limits the process of 

 fermentation, when fresh succulent vegetables are exposed to the 

 united influence of warmth and moisture. While this has been going 

 forward, the muscles which compose one of the coats of the paunch 

 have been constantly acting, and the food has travelled through the 

 various compartments of the stomach, and every portion of it has 

 been exposed to the influence of tliis fluid ; and finally, that which 

 was swallowed first, or which had been in the stomach many an hour 

 before, and which has been considerably softened, and duly prepared, 

 is ready to present itself first to be returned. 



By a slightly convulsive act, a portion suflUcient to form a pellet 

 of the proper size to be returned passes on from the paunch into the 

 second stomach, which is connected with the first under the floor of 

 the canal. This stomach is possessed of a strongly muscular coat, 

 and it contracts immediately on this mass, presses out the fluid which 

 it contains, and sends it along the canal through the third into the 

 fourth stomach ; at the same time it forms the more solid part into 

 a proper shape to be returned, and covers it with a mucous fluid, 

 provided by numerous little glands in the honeycomb-cells, and 

 which renders its return through the gullet more easy. 

 3* 



