C'46 3 



XXI. On the Formation of Fat in the Intestines of living Animals. 

 By Sir Everard Home, Bart, Presented by the Society for 

 promoting the Knowledge of Animal Chemistry, 



Read March 18, 1813. 



1 HE investigation of the digestive organs of different ani- 

 mals, in which I have been engaged for many years, has led 

 me imperceptibly into an enquiry respecting the particular 

 uses of the lower portion of the intestines in birds and qua- 

 drupeds. 



The first thing that attracted my notice more particularly 

 to this subject, was finding that in all animals, whose stomachs 

 are made up of a great variety of parts for the purpose of 

 economizing the food, the colon has a greater extent of 

 surface, and the course of the canal is so disposed, that its 

 contents must be a long time in their passage through it. 

 This circumstance led me to believe that the food, after the 

 chyle is formed and separated from it, undergoes in the lower 

 intestines some changes, by which a secondary kind of nou- 

 rishment is extracted from it. 



This opinion was much strengthened, by finding that the 

 colon of the casuary from Java is only one foot long, and each 

 of the casca which are appendages to it, only six inches long, 

 and a quarter of an inch in diameter, while the African ostrich 

 has the colon forty- five feet, and each of the casca two feet 



