Digestion. 119 



should be given first. This appears to distinctly reverse the 

 English practice of giving oats first and hay afterwards, 

 but perhaps only apparently so, for experiment shows that 

 the longer digestion is prolonged, the more oats and the less 

 hay pass out, so that some hay (under ordinary circum- 

 stances a considerable quantity) is always left in the 

 stomach until the commencement of the next meal. Now, 

 the presence of this hay from the previous feed may pre- 

 vent the corn of the succeeding feed from passing out too 

 early. Ellenberger says that in order that horses may 

 obtain the fullest possible nutriment from their oats, hay 

 should be given first and then water, which carries some of 

 the hay into the bowel ; after some time the oats are to be 

 given. The hay now passes into the bowel, and the oats 

 remain in the stomach. This will hardly fit in with our 

 English views of feeding and watering. 



If a horse be fed on three or four foods in succession, 

 they arrange themselves in the stomach in the order in 

 which they arrived, viz., they do not mix ; the first enters 

 the greater curvature, the last the lesser curvature, and it 

 is only at the pylorus that any mixing occurs under ordinary 

 conditions (Fig. 9, III.). 



This regular arrangement of the food in layers, when 

 taken in succession, is only disturbed when a horse is 

 watered after feeding ; under these circumstances the con- 

 tents are mixed together and digestion thereby impeded. 

 Apart from this, the ingestion of a considerable quantity of 

 fluid into a stomach already containing as much as it 

 should hold, means that material is washed out of the 

 stomach into the small intestines, and this sets up irritation 

 and colic. In this way more than half the food may be 

 washed at once out of the stomach. The water which a 

 horse drinks does not remain in the stomach, but passes 

 immediately into the small intestines, and in the course of 

 a few minutes finds its way into the caicum ; hence we have 

 the golden rule of experience that horses should be watered 

 first and fed afterwards. 



The appearance of the food in the stomach depends upon 



