58 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



After drinking, the proportion of water is materially in- 

 creased. In the normal condition, the solids float in the 

 liquid and are kept loose, open and mobile, one part on 

 another by its intermixture. The reticulum usually con- 

 tains a certain amount of liquid, and but little solid food. 

 " These organs move by slow contractions from end to 

 end, which gives a churning motion to the contents, and 

 forces the liquids continually through the semi-solid mass. 

 In this way, tne transformation of starch into sugar by 

 the action of the saliva is favored, and all soluble con- 

 stituents (sugar, gluten, albumen, salts, acids, etc.), are 

 dissolved out, and are sooner or later passed on into the 

 fourth stomach with the liquid solvent. Besides these 

 solvent and chemical actions, the food undergoes macera- 

 tion, softening, and disintegration, and is thus prepared 

 for subsequent easy and perfect mastication and digestion. 

 "Rumination. Concisely stated, this consists in the 

 return of food from the first two stomachs to the mouth, 

 its mastication, and its swallowing and descent to any one 

 or more of the four stomachs. Popular writers have been 

 generally misled by the doctrine of Flourens on this 

 matter. He opened the gullet in a sheep, allowing the 

 escape of the saliva which should have floated the contents 

 of the rumen, and when he found these contents firm and 

 solid, and a little ovoid solid mass between the lips of the 

 cesophagean demi-canal, he concluded that this was the 

 form in which food was returned into the mouth. One 

 fact should have forbidden such a conclusion his sheep 

 never ruminated nor brought up anything to ruminate. 

 The truth is this, that the solid packed state of the food 

 in the rumen, such as he found, is an insurmountable 

 barrier to chewing the cud. Whether this is produced by 

 suppressed secretion of saliva; by salivary fistula with the 

 discharge of this liquid externally, or by the simple forced 

 abstinence from water, the result is the same. Whenever 



