THE RUMINANT ORDER. 
The animals which compose this Order owe their general name to 
the singular faculty they possess of bringing back into their 
mouth, in order to re- chew it, the food they have once swallowed. 
This power is owing to a complicated structure of their stomach, 
which is divided into several compartments, and which have been 
considered, though with some exaggeration, as so many distinct 
Fig. 70.— The four stomachs of a Sheep. 
stomachs. The first and largest of these divisions is the paunch, 
b b (Fig. 70), which forms a continuation to the oesophagus (a), 
and occupies a large part of the abdomen, particularly towards the 
left side. The food is here accumulated after being roughly con- 
tused by the first mastication. 
Q 
