736 
PROFESSOR SPOONER’S ORATION. 
the stomach and intestines or the horse, the dog, the sheep, and 
the swine, than there is between the same organs in each of these 
animals as compared with those of man himself. And when we 
associate with this the established fact, that, depending upon 
the peculiar susceptibility of each division of these organs, will 
the effects of all internal medicinal agents be produced either 
directly, or, through them indirectly, upon every other part of 
the body, we shall, I trust, be impressed with a due importance of 
this division of our subject. 
Drawing your attention to the anatomy and physiology of the 
alimentary canal, it will be right that, in the first place, 1 should 
direct you to its commencement — that 1 should speak of that part 
which is designated the mouth. 
And if we take a cursory view of the mouth of the horse, we 
shall perceive, in the first place, that he is externally endowed 
with lips, having powerful muscles and numerous nerves enter- 
ing into their structure, by means of which he is not only ena- 
bled to grasp his food with facility, but also to select it with a 
nicety scarcely to be credited by the unobservant mind ; thus 
possessing a compensatory agent, as it were, which in a measure 
may be said to serve him in the place of hands. Within, he 
has a variety of teeth, some for the purpose of cutting his food, 
which are designated incisors, and others termed molares, adapted 
for grinding it down, and, with the assistance of the salivary 
fluid, preparing it for the next process towards assimilation. 
We see then, at once, by the arrangement of these parts, that 
it must be intended by nature that the horse should masticate 
his food considerably ; and were we to rest our inquiry here, we 
should also infer that this triturative action is effected prior to 
his performing the office of deglutition, and our inference would 
be correct ; but it is only by further anatomical investigation and 
a strict observance of the habits of the animal that we can prove 
to demonstration that it is so. 
Let us turn to that class of animals termed ruminants ; and 
although we have not developed in them to an equal extent the 
prehensile power of the lips, it is compensated for in the rough- 
ness of their inner surface, and the remarkable structure and 
muscular action of the tongue ; and while there is the absence of 
the opposing incisor teeth in the upper jaw, the additional num- 
ber of them, their form and position in the lower maxilla, together 
with the peculiarly constructed “ pad,” placed upon the under 
surface of the intermaxillary bones, admirably adapt them for 
cutting the herbage and the succulent roots upon which they feed. 
Here, too, we have as perfect a development of molar or grind- 
