OF THE GIZZARD. 293 



the necessity of accomplishing this change by 

 very slow degrees leaves the substance of our 

 author's argument sustained. 



It is presumable that animal and vegetable 

 matter are, in their ultimate elements, nearly the 

 same ; and, therefore, the last action of assimila- 

 tion of the food is probably similar in all creatures. 

 The variety of organization or structure in the 

 stomach will be found to depend on the propor- 

 tion of nutritious matter in the mass that is 

 swallowed. A vegetable feeder requires, from 

 the poverty of its food, to be continually digest- 

 ing ; and happily its food is in abundance around 

 it. The carnivorous animal gorges its food, after 

 long and irregular intervals ; its prey is precarious ; 

 but then that food is richer in nutritious matter, 

 and requiring to undergo only the last process of 

 assimilation. The variety and complication in 

 the structure of the digestive organs depending 

 on the nature of the food, is not only exhibited in 

 quadrupeds and birds, but in fishes and in insects. 

 Insects that suck blood have a simple canal : the 

 grasshopper and white ant, vegetable feeders, have 

 a complicated canal. Just for the same reason 

 the intestines of the lion are short and wide, and 

 those of the goat long and complicated. 



26* 



