LECTURE IV. 169 



spend a life of leisure and repose, are 

 made to ruminate or remasticate their food, 

 whilst other vegetable feeders, and I may 

 cite the horse as a familiar instance, whose 

 life is probably destined to more continual 

 exertion, do not ruminate. The horse how- 

 ever has a constant propensity to feed, and 

 the food passes readily from his small sto- 

 mach ; therefore, he would waste a great 

 deal of food, had not Nature provided him 

 with most capacious intestines, and con- 

 trived to produce a kind of second stomach 

 and digestion in that part of the bowels 

 called the intestinum csecum. 



Mr. Hunter was fully apprized that many 

 of the insects, of the lower kinds of ani- 

 mals and some fish, have teeth of various 

 sorts fixed in their stomachs to divide and 

 comminute their food. He was convinced 

 that birds do not swallow stones from mere 

 stupidity as Spalanzani supposed, but to 

 serve as temporary teeth, or as mill stones 

 to grind their food under the operation of 

 their powerful gizzards. In his paper on 

 the stomach of the gillaroo trout, he says 

 that, " the English trout swallows shell fish. 



