1 8 THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
seconds, after which a kind of convulsive movement 
will be observed in the throat, followed by the sudden 
upward movement of a "bolus" through the gullet; 
this bolus being a mass of grass or other food 
conveyed with spasmodic rapidity from the paunch 
to the mouth owing to the reversal of the direction 
of the normal " peristaltic/' or wave-like, movements 
of the walls of the gullet. 
Although this is not the case with the wild 
members of the ox-tribe, many ruminants are timid 
and more or less defenceless animals — or, at all 
events, practically defenceless against the rush of 
the larger Carnivora — whose sole security from attack 
rests on the rapidity of their flight. Now if they 
were to chew their food as it is gathered, they would 
have to remain a comparatively long time on their 
feeding-grounds, where they are necessarily most 
exposed to danger; but, thanks to the ruminating 
function, they are enabled to snatch a hasty meal — 
without the injurious results which occur in the case of 
the City clerk who resorts to the same practice — and 
retire to a place of security for its mastication and 
digestion ; these, as already mentioned, being carried 
on during a period of needful repose. 
The ruminating function, however, is by no means 
confined to the ox and the other members of the 
bovine family, but is common also to their near 
relatives the giraffe and deer, and likewise to their 
much more distant relations camels, llamas, and 
chevrotains or mouse-deer. Among the latter, 
chevrotains, which are in some respects more nearly 
akin to pigs than to deer, and have neither horns 
nor antlers, <^iffer from the ox and other typical 
ruminants by the simpler structure of the stomach, 
