160 
THE STOMACHS 
pillars separate, and the food tumbles through the aperture. This 
canal runs along, and thus occasionally opens into, the roof of 
the rumen or paunch. 
We will suppose a pellet of food that has undergone the first 
process of mastication—only half ground, and somewhat hard— 
passing into the oesophagus. Acted upon and propelled down 
the gullet by the strong muscles of that tube, the velocity with 
which it descends and its own weight give it a momentum suf¬ 
ficient to separate or break through these pillars and enter the 
paunch. The will of the animal may be somewhat concerned 
with this, or rather he acquires the habit of unconsciously con¬ 
tracting the muscles of the gullet with sufficient force to give 
the pellet the required momentum. We see, then, that by giving 
medicine in the form of a ball of some consistence, we could 
send it into the rumen, if we wished so to do; but that wish, pro¬ 
bably, would rarely or never be formed. 
We will next suppose, that after awhile the food has gone the 
round of the different compartments of the paunch, and has been 
projected over the intermediate ledge or valve, and entered the 
reticulum or second stomach, and has there been moulded again 
into the form of a pellet, and been impregnated with a viscid 
fluid, and passed again up the oesophagus, and has undergone a 
second mastication, and from the mingled cutting and grinding 
action of the molar teeth of the ruminant has been reduced to a soft 
pulpy mass. The tongue a third time forms it into a pellet, and it 
is conveyed through the pharynx, and once more descends the gul¬ 
let. It is not necessary now that this tube should act so strongly; 
or rather, it cannot do so on this softened, pultaceous mass, 
which when it arrives at the bottom has not sufficient mo¬ 
mentum to break through these bands or pillars, but, continuing 
to be impelled forward by the muscles of this canal at the base 
of the oesophagus, passes on as through a perfect tube, and 
enters the third stomach or manyplus; and the floor of the canal 
(but now inseparable, for these bands reach not so far) being con¬ 
tinued along the base of this stomach, the fluid part of the 
food, or that which has been sufficiently comminuted to undergo 
the process of digestion (which has not yet commenced), flows on 
and enters the abomasum or true stomach, that alone which is 
