INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 99 
pass into that organ?. Thus these animals, besides their 
stomach, have a reservoir in which to store up their food ; 
the product therefore of a single meal will require seve- 
ral days to digest it. 
2. The stomach (Ventriculus®) is that part of the in- 
testinal canal immediately above the bile-vessels, which 
receives the food from the gullet for digestion, and trans- 
mits it when digested to the lower intestines*. By its 
admixture with the gastric juice, the food acquires in the 
stomach a quite different colour from what it had in the 
gullet. In herbivorous insects it contains no acid, but, 
like the gastric juice of herbivorous guadrupeds, is of an 
alkaline nature’. The chyle is forced through this or- 
gan, probably in part by the pressure of the muscular 
fibres during the peristaltic motion ; and being pressed 
through the zzner skin, is first collected in the interme- 
diate cellular part, and ultimately forced through the 
outer skin®. At its posterior end it terminates in the 
pylorus, a fleshy ring or sphincter formed of annular mus- 
cular fibres‘. ‘The stomach often consists of two or more 
successive divisions, which are separated from each other, 
and are often of an entirely different conformation and 
shape&. Inthe Orthoptera, Predaceous Coleoptera, and 
several other insects, an organ of this kind precedes the 
ordinary stomach, which from its structure Cuvier deno- 
minates a second stomach or gizzard"; Posselt impro- 
perly calls it Cardia'; and by Ramdohr it is named the 
* Ramdohr Anat. 11—. b PratE XXI. Fic. 3. d. 
© Ramdohr Ibid. 28—. 4 Herold (Schmetterl 24) 
says that Ramdohr is mistaken here, and denies the existence of this 
juice in insects; but as Ramdohr’s researches were so widely extended, 
he is most likely to be right. * Ramdohr Jbid. 29. 
© loidals & Ibid. 28. 
» Anat. Comp. iv. 135. i Ramdohr, ui supr. 15, 
H 2 
