346 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



The third stomach, commonly called the psalterium or many- 

 plies (d) 9 owes its name to the remarkable folding of its internal 

 lining, the duplicatures of which resemble the leaves of a book. 



The fourth stomach, technically termed the reed or abomasus 

 (e\ secretes the gastric juice, and is thus analogous to the simple 

 stomach of the non-ruminating quadrupeds. 



The three first stomachs communicate directly with the 

 oesophagus by an elongated channel or groove, whose margins 

 when distended open into the paunch and reticulum, but 

 otherwise form a tube leading along the superior part of the 

 reticulum to the psalterium, which in its turn communicates 

 with the fourth stomach. 



The food, coarsely divided by a first mastication, accumulates 

 in the paunch, where it undergoes a prolonged maceration. 

 This process is continued in the second stomach, whose con- 

 tractions force it back again into the mouth ; and it is only 

 after having been chewed a second time, or ruminated, that it 

 penetrates into the manyplies, and thence into the fourth 

 stomach, which is the real seat of digestion. At first sight it 

 seems so astonishing that the aliments should thus enter the 

 first or the third stomach, according as they are swallowed 

 for the first or the second time, that one might be inclined to 

 attribute the phenomenon to a kind of intelligent selection 

 possessed by the openings of the various paunches ; but the 

 anatomical structure of the parts explains the mystery in a far 

 more simple and satisfactory manner. When the animal swal- 

 lows coarse and bulky aliments, such as those which form its 

 usual food, the bolus, on arriving at the point where the oeso- 

 phagus begins to form the muscular channel above mentioned, 

 mechanically distends the lips of the groove, and drops at once 

 into the paunch. But when the animal swallows smaller quan- 

 tities of semifluid aliments, such as those which have undergone 

 the process of rumination, their pressure does not suffice to 

 open the margins of the ossophageal groove, which consequently, 

 retaining the form of a tube, conveys them at once into the 

 third stomach. 



The structure of the intestines of the ruminants corresponds 

 with the complex arrangement of the stomach, for they are ex- 

 ceedingly long (in the ram twenty-eight times the length of the 

 body), very large, and tucked up into folds and sacks throughout 



