66 HORSE MANAGEMENT IN INDIA 



dung has a foul smell. Bile is constantly being excreted 

 by the liver. We find that certain of the higher animals, 

 such as man, are provided with a gall-bladder, into which 

 this fluid collects, to be poured out into the intestines 

 during the process of digestion, which is, in these cases, 

 intended by nature to take place at certain intervals. 

 The horse, however, possesses no gall-bladder, which fact 

 clearly indicates that he should be, more or less, constantly 

 supplied vdth food. The fact of his stomach being of 

 small capacity, and his intestines of large size, points to 

 the same conclusion. 



On leaving the small intestine, which is about 72 feet 

 long, the food becomes collected into a capacious cul-de-sac 

 — the csecum — formed by the large intestine, the length 

 of which is about 20 feet. The caecum appears to be a 

 kind of supplementary stomach, in which is collected the 

 pulpy mass of water and unassimilated food, which the 

 stomach and small intestines have failed to take up. Here 

 the remaining nutritive particles are dissolved out and 

 absorbed. The caecum can contain about 6 gallons of fluid. 



Functions performed by the Blood. — As the nutritive 

 part of the food becomes changed into forms capable of 

 being assimilated, it becomes gradually taken up by the 

 minute vessels, called ahsorUnts, that line the interior of 

 the stomach and intestines, and is conveyed into the 

 blood, which ramifies through the various tissues of the 

 body, and which supplies them with materials for repair. 

 Thus, we see that the blood acts as the vehicle for 

 removing the products resulting from the waste of tissue, 

 and also for furnishing the elements required in the 

 building up of new structures. 



