60 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



to the mouth, oftener than once, and in part followed the 

 known course of other finely divided matters in being 

 propelled into the cesophagen demi-canal and manifolds by 

 the contractions of the reticulum. 



"The conditions essential to rumination are: 1st, a 

 sufficient plenitude of paunch; 2d, v an abundance of water;* 

 3d, perfect quiet absence of all excitement; 4th, a fair 

 measure of health. 



" The use of the third stomach is merely to triturate and 

 reduce still further the food which has been already largely 

 disintegrated in the first two stomachs and in rumination. 

 The muscular folds seize and retain the solid particles, and 

 keep up the grinding process until the mass is too fine to 

 be longer caught or retained by the barbed papillae. The 

 food compressed between the muscular folds loses the 

 greater part of its liquid, so that the contents are normally 

 firm and partially dry, though never quite so in health. 

 When dried to the extent of adhering to the folds and 

 bringing off the cuticular layer upon its surface, it is to be 

 considered as abnormal. 



"The uses of the fourth stomach are precisely those of 

 the true stomach in other animals. Its acid gastric juice 

 acting on the nitrogenous elements of the food, trans- 

 forms them into peptones, a fine milky liquid, fitted to be 

 absorbed and added to the vital fluids. The mucous folds 

 in this stomach, covered as they are by peptic glands, 

 greatly increase the secretions of the digesting fluid and 

 enable the animal to digest promptly the food so beauti- 

 fully elaborated and prepared by the first three stomachs 

 and the act of rumination. These complicated processes 

 to which the food is subjected, serve to account for the 

 absence of fibrous elements in the dung, and for the finely 

 attenuated state of that excretion ; and also for the ease 

 with which ruminants can subsist on coarse and compara- 

 tively innutritious fodder. It explains, too, the com- 



