324 PHILOSOPHY OF ZOOLOGY. 
fish ‘too large for the stomach, so that a part remains in the 
gullet.. That which is retained in the gullet continues unalter- 
ed ; but, the portion which has entered the stomach is very 
speedily reduced. Again, the gastric juice is well known 
to possess the power of coagulating milk, and of redissolv- 
ing the coagulum. An antiseptic power was likewise as- 
cribed to the gastrie juice by Spartanzani. He states, that 
pieces of meat may be preserved a long time in this fluid, with- 
out undergoing putrefaction ; and that putrid meat becomes 
sweet, after remaining a short time in the stomach of a dog. 
The existence of this antiseptic power has been recently 
called im question by M. Monrecre *, who found that 
the liquid, which he considers as gastric juice, is nearly simi- 
lar to saliva, and putrefies as readily as that secretion, when 
kept in phials at the temperature of the human body. But 
it appears probable, that he operated on saliva only, or on 
saliva mixed with the mucous secretions of the gullet and 
stomach, as he obtained the subject of his experiments from 
his own stomach, after fasting, by means of vomiting ;. since 
it is not yet demonstrated, nor even rendered probable, that 
in the living system the gastric juice is secreted, unless 
when the stomach is distended with food. ’ 
In some cases, as among the ruminating quadrupeds, the 
stomach consists of several divisions. Into the first of these 
the food is conveyed as into a storehouse, to be afterwards 
thrown up in small quantities into the mouth, to. be remas- 
ticated and transmitted to the true digesting stomach, in 
which only the gastric juice is to be found. The two. 
first stomachs of the ox may be regarded as appendages 
of the gullet, and more connected with mastication and de- 
glutition, than digestion. In other animals, as birds, the 
food is exposed in the stomach to a process of trituration 
SRE Pee ee ee 
* Report of the French Institute for 1812. 
