272 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK IL 



quantity of vegetable food. This, at a suitable time is regurgitated 

 into the mouth, where it is mixed with abundant juice of the salivary 

 glands and reduced to a fine condition between the teeth. Passing 

 again down the gullet, the masticated food is this time directed into the 

 fourth division of the stomach the reed or rennet stomach, or 

 abomasum. The glands lining this stomach pour out abundant gastric 

 juice upon the food, which is at the same time kept in continual motion 

 by the peristaltic contractions of the wall of the organ. Through a 

 narrow aperture, the pylorus, the food, which is now called chyme, 1 

 passes next into the small intestine, a tube from half an inch to three 

 quarters of an inch in diameter, and some fifty yards long. About two 

 feet from its place of origin at the pylorus the small intestine is pierced 

 by the bile-duct, a vessel which pours into the intestine the special 

 secretion it derives from the liver. About fourteen or sixteen inches 

 farther on another tube enters the small intestine, this is the pancreatic 

 duct which conveys from the pancreas or sweetbread a juice which is 

 likewise poured into the intestine. Thus the small intestine receives 

 from outside itself two secreted fluids, the bile and the pancreatic 

 juice, and furthermore the inner lining of the small intestine itself is 

 beset with glands which pour out a juice called the succus entericus. 

 Finally, the small intestine after coiling about in an indescribable 

 manner opens abruptly into the side of the large intestine, a tube of 

 varying diameter, and from thirty to forty feet long, its excretory 

 orifice communicating with the exterior of the body. 



Thus, the food taken in at the mouth is passed through the pharynx 

 into the gullet, which leads into the stomach, where the food is reduced 

 to a sort of pea-soup consistency, and is then called the chyme. This 

 escapes through the pylorus into the small intestine, after traversing 

 which the food material enters the large intestine terminating in the 

 excretory orifice whereby the refuse of the food is ejected. During its 

 passage along the alimentary canal the food is attacked by a number of 

 digestive juices, comprising the saliva, the gastric juice, the bile, the 

 pancreatic juice, the succus entericus, and the juice of the large in- 

 testine. Each of these juices has its own special and appropriate 

 function, the gastric juice, for example, dissolving the nitrogenous 

 constituents or proteids of the food, the bile assisting in emulsifying 

 the fats, and the general result of their combined action being to 

 separate from such apparently unpromising materials as grass or roots, 

 hay or oil-cake, their nitrogenous or flesh-forming constituents, their 

 carbohydrates or sugar-like ingredients, and their fats or oils. Hence, 

 what is taken in at the mouth as hay or grass becomes, in the small 

 intestine, a grumous mixture of soluble peptones, derived from the 

 nitrogenous food constituents, and of soluble carbohydrates, emulsified 

 fats, and indigestible fibre. 



But the digestion of the proximate constituents of the food-stuffs in 

 the intestine would be of little avail, did not the system provide some 

 means whereby the contents of the intestine can be removed from that 



1 Gr. chuma, a thing poured. 



