DOMESTIC ANIMALS 113 



the household, or ask the local butcher to show you one. 

 It consists of only one compartment ; the digestion of the 

 food begins at once, and none of it is masticated a second 

 time. Although the animal's digestion is very strong, piggy 

 does not eat hay and straw, because he knows that he could 

 not digest it and that it would make him sick. In this re- 

 spect he surpasses in wisdom many little folks and some 

 big folks. What is the difference between a hog's and a 

 cow's stomach? Can you tell why a hog could not digest 

 hay and straw ? 



NOTE. Hog's meat should never be eaten raw in any form. So- 

 called measly meat causes the tapeworm which lives in the human 

 intestines and often proves very troublesome. A still more dangerous 

 parasite is the trichina, a very small worm. If infected pork is eaten 

 raw, the young trichinas find their way from the stomach into the 

 muscles, where they remain permanently at rest in little capsules. 

 If present in large numbers, they cause serious illness, and they may 

 even cause death. 



47. The Horse. 



MATERIAL : Pictures of different breeds of horses. A clean jaw- 

 bone, hoof, and bones of a foot would be valuable. Previously ob- 

 served : Bearing of different horses, biting, kicking, grazing. 



The domestication of the horse was accomplished in pre- 

 historic times ; but it was most likely one of the last animals 

 subjugated by man. A high civilization had been main- 

 tained in Egypt before the horse was introduced by invad- 

 ing nomads from Asia. The patriarchs of Israel, although 

 they were nomads, had no horses ; and it was not until the 

 time of Solomon that the horse became common among the 

 Israelites. There are still wild horses living in central 

 Asia. They are of a mouse-gray color and about the size of 

 ponies. Whether these wild horses or some extinct forms 

 are ancestors of our horses is not known. No wild horses 

 lived in America when the country was discovered by 



