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RECENT EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES ON THE PROCESS OF 

 RUMINATION OR CHEWING THE CUD. 



Having been led, while composing the " Alphabet of Zoology," now 

 in the press, to investigate minutely the process of digestion in different 

 animals, I think it will be interesting to state here in brief the results 

 of the recent investigation by M. Flourens, of the curious process of 

 chewing the cud or rumination, which quite upsets all previous explan- 

 ations. This process is always connected, excepting in individual 

 instances, as in man and the kangaroo, with a complicated stomach, 

 there being four, or at least four, distinct chambers whose structure is 

 very different. 



The first, similar to the crop or craw of birds, is termed the paunch, 

 and serves, by its heat and somewhat scanty moisture, to prepare the 

 herbage for farther change. It is situated on the left side, and lined 

 with a rough membrane studded with small flat projections. It is 

 inferred to have a rotatory motion, from the round masses of hair, called 

 bezoar stones, frequently found in it, arising from the union of hairs 

 licked off, from time to time, by the animal when cleaning itself, and 

 said, without proof, to be miraculously medicinal. In the chamois, the 

 bezoar stones appear to consist of vegetable matter. 



The second is termed the honey-comb bag, king's hood, or bonnet, 

 is much smaller than the paunch, and is situated on the right of the 

 lower end of the gullet, which opens in common into it and into the 

 paunch. On the inside a number of shallow cells, like those of a honey- 

 comb, are formed by projecting membrane, and the whole is lined with 

 a rough scarf skin continuous with that of the gullet and paunch. 



The third is the smallest of the four, and is named the many-plies, 

 because the inner surface rises up into a great many folds, one above 

 the other, amounting to about forty in the sheep, and about one hundred 

 in the ox, and covered with a rough scarf skin. Some of these folds 

 project farther than others, there being first two long ones on each side, 

 and within these two shorter, and so on. The smallest of them, between 

 the opening from the honeycomb bag, are puckered, so as to act as 

 a valve between this third chamber and the fourth. 



The fourth, which is exclusively the digestive stomach, according to 

 Dr. Carus, is called the rennet bag, or red. Here, as in the simple 

 stomachs of beasts of prey, we find no lining of scarf skin, which goes 



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