98 ' THE NATURE AND TREATMENT OF 



postures are assumed, the most usual one being lying down. 

 The camel under such circumstances will often gather his fore 

 limbs underneath his body, and lie dowYi upon his breast as 

 an ostrich does. M. Colin asserts that in the stable animals 

 will ruminate without intermission for half an hour or an hour, 

 or longer. But this we cannot confirm ; for our own part, we 

 should say intermissions are much more frequent. 



" Cessation of rumination is a grave affair. In disease, in 

 fact, if we do not succeed in re-establishing this primordial act 

 of digestion, though it be but in an irregular manner, the con- 

 sequences may be serious, while the disease itself increases in 

 danger. And while cessation of rumination must be accounted 

 unfavorable, its return may be hailed as favorable. These 

 reflections teach us that the diet in cases of sickness should 

 neither even be unrestricted or forbidden, since vacuity of 

 rumen fno less than that of repletion) could not fail to injure 

 digestion. 



" Imperfect as the foregoing sketch of rumination must be 

 acknowledged to be, still, from the nature of the subject, we 

 could hardly expect more. There are certain sensible phe- 

 nomena which cannot by the imagination even be descried 

 when we consider how digestion enters into every act of it. To 

 give one example of this : At the time that rumination is in 

 its fullest activity, if the back of the hand be thurst into the 

 lefl flank so as to press against the rumen, the contractions 

 and displacements taking place in it are to be plainly felt i even 

 the eye can discover these undulatory motions connected with 

 rumination. And yet these motions have escaped the notice 

 of all who have seen in the motion of the flank nothing beyond 

 the general effect. Although in this general motion, in unity 

 with the act of respiration, is concealed an evolution of the 

 rumen observable by the attentive eye alone. This is a phe- 

 nomenon of which we have had additional evidence afforded lis 

 by placing animals in a stable facing the north, in such 

 position that the rays of light impinged upon them at an angle 

 of about 45°. By this simple means, a shadow has been pro- 

 duced which, descending upon the transverse vertebral processes 



