RUMINANTS. 



235 



FIG. 168. 



tion, and this is stored in the first stomach, which 

 is called the paunch, or rumen, and the second, or 

 reticulum, which is lined with hexagonal cells. These 

 first two compartments constitute the cardiac division 

 of the stomach, and the food 

 passes into them indifferently 

 and from one to the other, 

 becoming mixed and saturated 

 with the saliva. After enter- 

 ing the stable, or while resting 

 in the pasture, the ox brings 

 up the grass in little masses 

 and grinds it to a pulp between 

 his powerful molars, mixing it 

 at the same time with more 

 saliva. He then swallows the 

 pulpy mass, and in this deglu- 

 tition the stomach walls fold 

 together, so that the aliment 

 passes not into either the 

 rumen or the reticulum, but 



directly into the third stomach, called psalterium, which 

 takes its name from the leaf-like folds of membrane that 

 line its walls. Through these folds the broth is strained 

 into the fourth stomach, or rennet-bag, where are ac- 

 complished the phenomena of digestion that are com- 

 parable to those that take place in animals having simple 

 stomachs. At the extremity of this last compartment 

 is the entrance to the intestinal canal. In the ruminants 

 the total length of the intestine is more than twenty- 

 five times that of the body. 



Before describing the principal species of ruminants, 

 we must insist on the importance of the form of the feet 



COMPOUND STOMACH OF AN ox. 

 a, oesophagus; b, rumen, or 

 paunch ; c, reticulum, or second 

 stomach ; d, omasum, or third 

 stomach; e, abomasum.or fourth 

 stomach ; /, duodenum. 



