16 DIGESTION AND FOOD. 



work. Looking up the hill, they dexterously began to lift up 

 with their snouts the largest of the loose stones, continually 

 grubbing their noses into the cool ground. Their tough wet 

 snouts seemed to be sensible of the quality of everything they 

 touched; and thus, out of the apparently barren ground, they 

 managed to get fibres of roots, to say nothing of worms, 

 beetles, and other travelling insects they met with. As they 

 slowly advanced working up the hill, with their ears most 

 philosophically shading their eyes from the hot sun, I could 

 not help feeling how little we appreciate the delicacy of 

 several of their senses, and the extreme acuteness of their 

 instinct 



" There exists, perhaps, in creation no animal which has 

 less justice and more injustice done to him by man than the 

 pig. We see him gifted with every faculty of supplying him- 

 self, and of providing even against the approaching storm, 

 which no creature is better capable of foretelling, and we 

 begin our treatment of him by putting an iron ring through 

 the cartilage of his nose. Having thus barbarously deprived 

 him of the power of searching for and analyzing his food, we 

 then generally condemn him for the rest of his life to solitary 

 confinement in a sty." 



Carnivorous animals, such as the dog and cat, grasp food 

 with their powerful jaws, and often lacerate and fix it with 

 their fore extremities. In prehension they are essentially 

 biting animals, and, accordingly, their cheeks are loose and 

 ample, the mouth opens widely, and their teeth are pointed, 

 and curve back, to hook up any object fixed between the 

 jaws by the masseter muscles. Persons are not always 

 aware that, in the act of biting, an animal uses its lower jaw, 

 which articulates with the fixed bones of the head. If a 

 dog's lower jaw is held, he cannot bite; and when Maccomo 

 recently was seized by a tiger, he judiciously held on to the 



