554 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO170O-1. 



also. Man therefore having these parts formed, not like carnivorous animals, 

 as you well observe, but more resembling those that live on herbs, roots, fruits, 

 &c. it may seem reasonable to conclude, that nature never designed him to live 

 on flesh ; but, that the wantonness of his appetite and a depraved custom had 

 inured him to it, as Gassendus remarks in one of liis epistles, viz. that custom 

 may make that seem natural to us, which nature never intended : as he instances 

 in a lamb bred on ship-board, which refused the green pasture of the fields for 

 the diet it was formerly used to : and I have often seen here in London a horse 

 that with a great deal of pleasure would eat oysters, scranching them shell and 

 all between his teeth, and swallowing them down, and this he took to by ac- 

 cident, being left at a tavern door where stood a tub of oysters ; and since that 

 has frequently done the same whenever they were offered him. Now Gassendus 

 observes, that children (from whom he thinks we may better take the instincts 

 of nature than from our appetites when depraved by custom) are much fonder 

 of fruit than of any flesh that is offered them ; and therefore he supposes it more 

 natural to them. 



Tiie instance you give wherein the structure of the intestines of carnivorous 

 animals is different from that in men, is, that the former want a colon ; where- 

 as in men there is a very large one, which is not to be observed except in such 

 animals as live upon fruits, roots, herbs, &c. What therefore you propose to 

 me is, to consider, whether it generally holds, or how far, that animals that are 

 not carnivorous have such a colon, or somewhat equivalent, and those that are 

 carnivorous have it not. 



To begin with those animals that are carnivorous, and have no colon or large 

 caecum ; for though they may have the appendicula vermiformis, yet if that is 

 not extended, or filled with the faeces, which the other guts contain, I think it 

 not properly to be esteemed a distinct gut, or to come into that number, since 

 here it does not perforin the office of one, in containing the food or excrement. 

 So in a man, in dogs, and other animals, when it is thus contracted I exclude 

 it out of the number of the intestines, though by use and custom (but I see no 

 reason for it) it is commonly reckoned one of the intestina crassn. 



Animals therefore that have no colon or large caecum, though some of them 

 have this appendicula vermiformis, and are carnivorous, I reckon, 1. The dog- 

 kind, under which, besides their own species, may be included the fox, the 

 wolf, the coati mondi, the badger, the otter, &c. 2. The vermin kind ; as the 

 weasel, the fitchet, the pole-cat, the martin, &c. Both these kinds have a 

 bone in the penis : have no colon or caecum ; some have the appendicula ver- 

 miformis, and all are carnivorous. 3. The cat-kind ; to which may be reduced 

 besides their own species, the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the linx, the cata- 



