DIGESTION IN THE STOMACH. 83 



food. Drinking freely of water while digestion is going on in 

 the stomach is liable, by largely diluting the gastric juice, to 

 arrest its action for the time being. The lower the tempera- 

 ture of water that is drunk while digestion is going on in the 

 stomach, the more liable will such water be to check the 

 action of the gastric juice, which is unable to perform its 

 functions at a temperature much below blood heat. When 

 the supply or action of the gastric juice becomes more or less 

 arrested, the food which is in the stomach is apt, in the 

 absence of its natural antiseptic, to become decomposed, with 

 the probable result of indigestion and flatulent colic caused 

 by the evolution of gas. Hence we may conclude that horses 

 should not be worked, watered, or subjected to excitement 

 soon after they have been liberally fed ; and that they, as 

 already stated, should not be given large quantities of food 

 which they can readily swallow. The fact of a horse's 

 intestines being of great volume shows that his food should be 

 of a bulky nature. But as his stomach is small and simple in 

 structure, we may assume that the material from which he 

 derives his nourishment should be easy of digestion, and that 

 he should be frequently fed. We know that the stomach of 

 an animal is large and complex in proportion to the amount 

 of preparation its natural food requires in that organ. Thus 

 we find that the stomach of weasels and ferrets, whose natural 

 food (blood) needs but slight modification before being 

 digested, is little more than an enlarged prolongation of the 

 gullet. The stomach of cattle is, on the contrary, very 

 complex, consisting as it does of one true and three pre- 

 paratory stomachs, and is consequently far better suited for 

 the digestion of coarse and innutritious fodder (such as hay 

 made from grass in seed, and straw) than that of a horse. 

 As the material from which a horse derives his nourishment 

 should be easy of digestion, we are forced to infer that the 

 remainder should be made up of indigestible matter ; for it 



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