NATURAL THEOLOGY. 301 



gree of heat ; but that when once vegetables are 

 reduced to pieces by mastication, the fluid then 

 exerts upon them its specific operation. Its first 

 effect is to soften them, and to destroy their nat- 

 ural consistency : it then goes on to dissolve them, 

 not sparing even the toughest parts, such as the 

 nerves of the leaves.* 



I think it very probable that the gratification 

 also of the animal is renewed and prolonged by 

 this faculty. Sheep, deer, and oxen appear to be 

 in a state of enjoyment whilst they are chewing 

 the cud : it is then, perhaps, that they best relish 

 their food.^^ 



^* Wherever a seed can lodge we find vegetables growing ; and 

 Vi^herever we find digestible matter there are animals to live upon 

 it ; and the kind of food determines the organization of the crea- 

 ture, not resulting from it, but provided for it. The class of rumi- 

 nants feed on the coarser herbage where the vegetable is in abund- 

 ance, but the actual nutritious matter is small in quantity compared 

 with the mass. There is therefore an obvious necessity for a more 

 complex apparatus to extract the smaller proportion of matter ca- 

 pable of being animalized : hence the maceration in the first sto- 

 mach, hence the regurgitation and rumination, nnd the reception 

 into the second and third stomach, in preparation for the proper 

 digestion in the last. When the mass is digested, the nutritious 

 part is still small in proportion to the whole ; and to permit that 

 smaller portion of aliment to be absorbed and carried into the sys- 

 tem, the intestinal canal must be long and complex, offering re- 

 sistance to the rapid descent of the food, and giving it lodgement : 

 and thus there is always a correspondence between the complica- 

 tion of the stomach and the length of the intestines, and between 

 both and the nature of the food. It is further very remarkable, that 

 when animals of the same species live in different climates, where 

 there is more or less abundance of vegetable food, there is an adap- 

 tation of their digestive organs. 



♦ Spall. Dis. iii. sect. cxl. 



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