stelleb's account op the sea cow. 191 



back into the gullet, and at first sight they refute the preposterous opinion that has 

 been held in regard to the animal's being a ruminant. 



The oesophagus is inserted into the stomach nearly at the middle, as in the horse 

 and the hare. 



The stomach is of stupendous size, 6 feet long, 5 feet wideband so stuffed with food 

 and seaweed that four strong men with a rope attached to it could with great effort 

 scarcely move it from its place and drag it out. 



The coats of the stomach could not by any means be separated; together they 

 were 3 lines thick. A very strange fat omentum 2 lines thick surrounds the stomach. 

 In the upper part it adheres firmly at the middle to the membranous coat of the 

 stomach; for the rest, it is detached and seems more to warm the stomach with its 

 own heat than to hold it in place. The inner coat of the stomach is white, smooth, 

 and not wrinkled nor villous. But what was most peculiar, and perhaps incredible 

 to many, is that I found contained in the stomach, and not far from the entrance of 

 the oesophagus into the stomach, an oval gland as large as a man's head, and grown 

 fast to it something like a large aneurism between the muscular and fibrous [nervosa) 

 coat; this gland opened through the villous coat with many pores and openings and 

 exuded into the cavity of the stomach a great quantity of whitish liquid, in consis- 

 tency and color like pancreatic juice. I had as a witness of this curious phenomenon 

 the assistant surgeon, Bettge. What the character of this juice was I discovered by 

 a double chance experiment; when I inserted a silver tube through the pores of 

 the inner coat, in order to discover by blowing into them the excretory ducts, the 

 tube came out black, as is wont to happen when silver touches sulphurous acid. I 

 observed the same thing when I ordered Archippus Konovalow, the helper of the 

 assistant surgeon, to take out the contents of the stomach with his hands, and when 

 this was done a silver ring that he had upon his finger was stained with the same color. 



The inner coat of the stomach was perforated by white worms half a foot long, 

 with which the whole stomach, pylorus and duodenum, swarmed ; and the worms had 

 penetrated clear into the cavity of the glands. The gland when cut poured out a 

 great quantity of juice. After that I could not examine any more stomachs, because 

 I lacked the necessary assistance; and with the few men I had I could not, if I found 

 an animal lying anywhere, turn it over upon its back; and therefore I am in doubt 

 whether this gland is a constant thing or rather the result of some disease. 



The pylorus was so large and tumid that at first sight I took it for a second 

 stomach and was anxious to find the two others, too, because 1 thought the animal 

 was a ruminant. But when I cut into the pylorus I was otherwise informed, and 

 from its being like the stomach I saw that it was the pylorus. But to my misfortune 

 it happened that the pancreas along with the duct into the duodenum and the ductus 

 choledochus were cut, for the simple reason that the stomach could not be taken out 

 whole with the liver on account of its great size, and besides, my assistants, who had 

 been hired for just one hour with tobacco, which took the place of money, became 

 tired of the work. Yet I recognized that the pancreas was divided into two lobes 

 and composed of many flat, rather large glands, and that it was, for so large an 

 animal, comparatively small; for it did not extend in length beyond 4 inches. 



There are more intestines in this animal than in any other, except, perhaps, the 

 whale alone, which hitherto I have not been in a position to inspect. The abdominal 



