64 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



of the stomach to the entrance of the biliary and pancreatic 

 ducts. (See a, in cut of intestines.) 



The jejunum — from the word jejune, meaning empty — is 

 so called because it is nearly always found quite empty after 

 the animal's death. This is in consequence of the great 

 rapidity with which the food passes through it. It is of 

 smaller diameter than the duodenum, and floats more loosely 

 in the abdomen. 



Last of the small intestines comes the ileum, whose walls 

 are more muscular and thicker than those of the jejunum. 



The ileum terminates in the ccecum, or blind gut, the first 

 of the large intestines. Its entrance is not into the end of 

 this, as would naturally be expected, but near the head, or 

 outlet, as shown in the cut, where the ccecum appears prom- 

 inently at e. It follows, from this arrangement, that the food 

 which passes into this blind pouch must twice traverse its 

 whole length, on its return from the closed end of the pouch 

 passing directly by the mouth of the ileum, where it is pre- 

 vented from re-entering by a peculiar valve. In the ccecum, 

 as is supposed, the larger proportion of the process of absorb- 

 ing the nutritive elements of chyle is conducted. Nearly all 

 the water which the horse swallows passes at once into this 

 gut, without any delay in the stomach and small intestines. 



The ccecum is connected with the next intestine, the colon, 

 (see fg g, in cut,) by a considerably larger neck than with the 

 small intestine. The colon is very large, and occupies two- 

 fifths of the abdominal cavity. It is generally found filled 

 with the alimentary substances. Its contents are made up 

 of the coarser parts of the food, and become hard and solid. 

 Being deprived of nearly all its moisture and nutrition, the 

 food reaches the tapering portion of the colon, which is di- 

 vided into sections, or compartments, by a number of circular 

 bands surrounding and puckering it. By these, the foeces is 

 separated into balls, upon which they contract, their absorb- 

 ents extracting the last remaining nutrition, when, by a fur- 

 ther contraction, each ball is forced onward to the rectum, 

 from whence it is discharged. 



