VESTIGIAL PARTS. 67 



This large caecum is a favourite situation for intestinal 

 concretions. These concretions are of different kinds, 

 but they all agree in having a foreign body, such as a 

 button, nail, hair-pin, or stray piece of metal for a 

 nucleus, around which mineral salts in crystalline form 

 are deposited in successive layers until the stone attains 

 great weight five or six kilograms is not uncommon, 

 and a stone weighing twenty kilograms is preserved in 

 the museum of the Royal Veterinary College, London. 



Hairs from the animal's skin not infrequently form 

 the bulk of such concretions, and may be found in the 

 stomach of many ruminants, especially calves ; but 

 attention is mainly directed to the caecum. The larger 

 calculi do not give rise to such dangerous effects as the 

 smaller, for their weight and size keep them confined to 

 the caecum, whereas the smaller calculi may leave this 

 portion of the alimentary canal, and getting into 

 narrower channels obstruct the bowel and induce death. 



Apart from the special inconvenience caused by a 

 large colon favouring the production of calculi, there is 

 another aspect under which we may study such a 

 question. The more remote parts of the body are from 

 the heart the more likely are they to suffer, if from any 

 cause the quantity of the blood in the body is dim- 

 inished, or the power of the heart fails. For instance, 

 a man suffers severely from typhoid fever, the action of 

 the heart is weakened, and maintains the circulation 

 with difficulty ; as a result the toes, situated at the ex- 

 treme limits of the circulatory system, do not receive 

 sufficient blood, and mortify in consequence. The 

 following is an instructive case taken from a young 



