GASTRIC DIGESTION. 373 



ha)' ; the remainder had passed into the intestine. Other animals killed 

 at longer periods after meals showed the passage of the food from the 

 stomach into the intestine was not as rapid toward the end of the 

 repast as at the commencement. There appears, therefore, to be two 

 periods in the digestion of hay in the horse: In the first, the materials, 

 as soon, almost, as they enter the stomach, are rapidly pushed into the 

 intestine by the food that comes later; in the second period, toward 

 the end of the meal, the sojourn is more prolonged, and chymifi cation 

 is therefore, more perfect. The" gastric digestion of hay appears to be 

 abbreviated by the ingestion of water, as the water carries into the 

 intestine a good deal of food. Digestion of hay does not appear to be 

 modified by previous chopping. 



When oats are given as food, at the commencement of the meal, a 

 part always passes into the intestine, but, as oats only absorb a little 

 more than their own weight of saliva, the volume never becomes as high 

 as when hay is eaten. Colin reports, also, the following experiments : 

 A horse which had received two thousand five hundred grammes of 

 oats was killed two hours after the commencement of the meal. The 

 stomach, which, together with the oats and saliva, had received five 

 thousand grammes of material, was now found to contain six- thousand 

 and seventy grammes, the addition being derived from the gastric juice 

 and the saliva which had been swallowed during the meal. Here, also, 

 two analogous periods ma}' be made out, but less accented than when 

 hay is the food. It, therefore, seems evident that small meals, frequently 

 repeated, would serve to render the gastric digestion in solipedes more 

 perfect. Thus, in Paris, according to the statement of Colin, the horses 

 in the omnibus service make six meals from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m., and each 

 of these meals has three hours for digestion, with the exception of the 

 last, which has six. Water is only given when hay is included, and not 

 at other times. It follows that gastric digestion is not of equal impor- 

 tance for all kinds of food, and it is, therefore, possible so to distribute 

 the constituents of a meal as to allow of a longer gastric digestion of 

 oats, which have a greater percentage of albuminous bodies and carbo- 

 hydrates than hay. Therefore, in the feeding of a horse especial atten- 

 tion should be given to the sequence or to the order in which the different 

 constituents of the horse's meal follow each other,— a fact which is of 

 greater importance for the horse than for man, the carnivora, and the 

 ruminants, in which all the' constituents of a meal may be kept in the 

 stomach until the digestion is completed. Experience has shown that 

 if oats are given first, subsequent eating of hay forces the oats into the 

 intestines before the digestion of the latter is complete ; consequently, 

 if given after hay, the sojourn in the stomach is much more prolonged, 

 while the hay, containing a minimum of albuminous matter, may be 



