VOt. XV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 243 



Account of Books. 



I. Jo, Con. Peyeri,* Merycologia, sive de Ruminantibus et Ruminatione Commen- 



tarius. Basil. Ato. N° I77, p. 1246. 



This treatise consists of three books ; in the first of which, after a division 

 of animals into ruminantia et non ruminantia, he reckons up those of the 

 former kind, some of which, he says, may more properly be said to chew the 

 cud, others imitate that action, and are here called ruminantia spuria, as the 

 mole-cricket, bee, beetle, crab, lobster, mullet, and several birds ; but the 

 creatures which ruminate in a more genuine sense are, among quadrupeds, the 

 ox, deer, sheep, and goat kind, the camel, hare, and the squirrel ; also some 

 men, of whom he gives several instances. 



In the second book, he treats of the organs subservient to rumination, as of 

 the several stomachs belonging to some of the ruminantia legitima, and of them 

 first in general ; then in particular of the paunch, reticulus (xixpu'^aXof) the feck, 

 the reed ; of the single stomach in hares and rabbits ; all which are described 

 with great exactness, and after a very satisfactory manner. 



As to the stomachs of the ruminantia spuria, he affirms they all have spiral 

 muscular fibres, by means of which they, as it were, grind their meat up and 

 down, after a manner somewhat analogous to rumination ; for the better affect- 

 ing of which, in some of them the stomach is extremely rough in the inside, 

 as in the mullet; in others it is very hard and callous, as in geese, hens, &c. in 

 the stomach of others, as of the cricket and lobster, there are teeth. 



After this he passes to the oesophagus, as it is in the ruminantia genuina ; 

 where, rejecting the account which Petrus Aponensis, -^mylianus. Aqua- 

 pendent, and even Fallopius, have given of that part, he describes it, according 

 to Steno, to consist chiefly of 2 spiral muscles, formed like screws, crossing one 

 another. 



From the oesophagus he proceeds to the mouth, and then to those parts 

 which more remotely assist in rumination, such as the pectoral and abdominal 



* John Conrad Peyer, who acquired at a very early period of life much celebrity by his anatonaical 

 writings, was a native of SchafFhausen in Switzerland. Before his Merycologia appeared he published 

 his Exercitat. de Glandulis Intestinor. l677; his Pararga Anatomica, l681 ; and Paeonis et Pythagorae 

 (nempe Peyeri et Harder!) Exercitationes Anatomico-medicae, 1682. Resides these, and one or two 

 other anatomical tracts, several communications from him were inserted in the Eph. Nat. Curioi. 

 Peyer's merits as an anatomist are very considerable; and although he was not the first discoverer of 

 the muciparous glands of the intestines;* yet has he described these glands more fully and accu- 

 rately than others had done, and at the same time shown in a clearer point of view the consequences 

 which result from their action, both in their natural and diseased state. His Merycologia, and some 

 others of his works, prove that he was well versed in many parts of comparative anatomy. 

 • See the account of Pecblin at p. 331, vol. 8, of thii Abridgment. 

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