MOUNTAIN MAMMALS 71 



honeycomb bag which has a curious hexagonal pat- 

 tern on its walls. (4) Having filled its paunch and 

 perhaps some of its honeycomb bag, the Deer, or 

 whatever Ruminant it is, seeks a place of safety where 

 it may chew the cud without risk of molestation. By 

 reversing the swallowing movements it forces the 

 grass in lumps, or "boluses," up its gullet into the 

 mouth. This is a little as if vomiting had become a 

 habit. (5) In the mouth the food is thoroughly 

 chewed and mixed with saliva. (6) It then passes 

 down the gullet for the second time, skips the paunch 

 and the honeycomb bag, and travels along a muscular 

 groove, anterior to the latter, into the third cham- 

 ber the manyplies. In this it passes between a num- 

 ber of partitions which serve as a sort of strainer. 

 (7) Finally, the food reaches the fourth chamber the 

 reed, or true stomach. For the first three chambers 

 really belong to the lower end of the gullet, and no 

 digestion takes place in them except in so far as the 

 salivary juice from the mouth may operate. But all 

 this is a digression started by the Deer lying among 

 the bracken. 



The Red Deer on the hills take our thoughts to 

 allied mountain mammals. Very characteristic of 

 the high mountains of the Continent of Europe, from 

 the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, is the Chamois (Rupi- 

 capra tragus), which is really a goat-like Antelope. 

 It stands about two feet high at the withers, about 

 the same as our Roe Deer. Chamois go about in 

 flocks of a dozen or so; the full-grown males keep by 

 themselves except at the pairing season in October, 

 when rivals fight fiercely and often fatally. Two par- 

 ticular fitnesses may be noted: (i) There is shaggy 



