CHAP. II.] CHYLIFICATION. 143 



of the belly, together with the coecum, in order to 

 produce a stool — the whole transaction being most 

 intelligibly termed " a motion." Several such im- 

 pediments occur in the course of the intestinal canal, 

 and some of them are so abrupt, as no after-art is 

 ever capable of reducing to a straight line ; the 

 reason for which kind of contrivance is, that its 

 contents still possess some nourishment, which it 

 is desirable should be extracted, and they are thus 

 detained that nothing might be lost ; to say nothing 

 of the existing opinion, that the food which has 

 thus lain some time in the animal must impart a 

 juice differing considerably in its properties from 

 that which was but recently received into the sto- 

 mach. No operation in the system is more beautiful 

 than this one of drawing from the food, now pro- 

 perly mixed and softened, what becomes the milky 

 fluid, called chyle, first, and blood immediately 

 afterwards ; the first mentioned being performed by 

 innumerable transparent vessels, whose fine mouths 

 open every where on the inner surface of the in- 

 testines. From the word lacta (milk), these vessels 

 are termed lacteals, their function being absorption 

 (like the lymphatics); the largest whereof lying along 

 the mesentery (as I said before), sends out smaller 

 branches, and these again more minute ones, to en- 

 circle and penetrate the gut ; in this their mouths 

 do incessantly suck up, or absorb, and convey to 

 the larger vessels the material for replenishing the 

 system with new blood. Passing along the spine, 

 the large tube, filled with this milky fluid, at 



