284 Transactions of tee American Institute. 



whicli derive tlieir sustenance from tlie atmosphere and inorganic 

 materials in the soih The cattle upon the thousand hills are all busily- 

 employed in transmuting vegetable matter into a new material that 

 alone can supply the alimentary necessities of carnivorous animals 

 and omniverous man. We cannot live on grass, nor can lions, tigers, 

 cats, wolves or dogs. They are constituted for feeding on animalized 

 food. It must be nearly like their own flesh, so that when swallowed, 

 it is quickly appropriated for repairing the ordinary waste going on 

 in their own structure. The difference between machines of our 

 invention and those vitalized, animated organisms is this : The first 

 wear out without repairing themselves. IS^ature repairs itself, and 

 there produces an exact fac-simile of its own internal and external 

 form, leaving a new machine to succeed tliat which ultimately 

 becomes worthless. Thus sheep, cattle, etc., begin the process of pre- 

 paring suitable nutriment for us. Being unpatented machines for 

 transforming vegetables into flesh. When that act has been accom- 

 plished, then we actually eat the machine. This, therefore, comprises 

 the whole history of the life of a cowv Philosophically viewed, the 

 subject requires- further elucidation. The tongue partially rotates 

 with a finger-like movement, that winds hay or other fibrous food into 

 a more compact form. Lubricated by saliva in the mouth, it rolls 

 down the long throat canal to the paunch, analogous to the crop in 

 birds. Another follows, till a sense of satiety is when the hopper is 

 full. After remaining a few hours, a mass of loosely packed grass 

 balls, the animal being at rest, one of them instantly ascends 

 the gullet which reconducts it to the grinders. Subjected to 

 thorough mastication, beiug softened for the operation while 

 lying in the paunch, and reduced into smaller compass, it is 

 swallowed again. Thus each cud traverses the gullet from one 

 extremity to the other, over a surface of about one yard each way, 

 an aggregate of nine feet. In dropping it into the bag the second 

 time, an opening into a second stomach allows it to slide in and then 

 closes the communication till the next cud arrives. Nothing is per- 

 mitted to pass through the gate that does not give an appropriate 

 countersign. If indigestible articles were to have ingress immense 

 constitutional derangements would ensue, destructive to life. Balls 

 of hair are quite common in the rumen from one to four inches in 

 diameter, which cannot get through the portal. They no sooner 

 approach it — impelled in that direction by a contractile force of muscu- 

 lar fibres in paunch tissue — than the sphincter hugs tighter to keep it 



