236 REVIEW.-BRIDGEWATER TREATISES, NO. 8. 
It would be a pleasing task to review the whole of this inte¬ 
resting work, but the limits of The Veterinarian confine 
us to Book III, and even here w^e must necessarily be brief. We 
shall, however, endeavour to exhibit to our readers a few of the 
most striking facts which the author has detailed. He shews, in 
the first place, that the mechanical arrangements for reducing the 
food of animals are wonderfully varied, according to the peculiar 
qualities of their food. 
In the graminivorous and granivorous tribes, for example, the 
teeth are literally instruments for grinding or triturating herba¬ 
ceous matters and seeds. In carnivorous animals, such a struc¬ 
ture would be useless : the teeth, therefore, are suited only for 
cutting or tearing. In gnawing animals, the teeth present a 
totally different structure, but, at the same time, are admirably 
fitted to the habits of the animal. Occasionally, as in the fowl 
tribe of birds, the grinding apparatus is placed, not in the mouth, 
but in the stomach itself, this organ being, as it were, expressly 
contrived for trituration ; while some of the functions it performs 
in other animals are transferred to contiguous parts. The 
structure and mechanism of the stomach, and of the alimentary 
canal, next claim attention. In carnivorous animals, whose food 
requires comparatively little assimilation, the alimentary canal is 
short and of a simple structure. On the other hand, in vege¬ 
table feeders, that canal is long and complicated, but perfectly 
adapted for macerating their food, and for extracting from it every 
thing that can be converted into nourishment. Nor is there an 
adherence to any model, but the whole is throughout varied, as 
if in order to demonstrate the power and the wisdom of Him by 
whom they were contrived. Thus the alimentary canals of the 
cow and of the horse are formed on entirely different models, 
thouo-h the food of both animals is nearly the same. 
The author next proceeds to the consideration of the chemical 
changes which the food undergoes in the stomach and duodenum. 
In these changes we discover arrangements not less wonderful, 
indeed more so, than in those of structure and mechanism. The 
variety of forms assumed by bodies having the same essential 
composition produces a latitude in the choice of diet which is 
almost infinite; at the same time the organs being endowed with 
the power to discriminate all these differences, and to act on the 
ultimate principles of bodies, elaborate from all these various 
forms of matter the same uniform chyle. The power by which 
the stomach is enabled to effect these astonishing changes is 
that of associating the different alimentary substances with wa¬ 
ter—of dissolving or digesting them. This dissolving power 
seems to be exerted through the agency of chlorine derived from 
