THE VELUM PALATI. 401 
expansible, and they are so to a degree seen in no other animal, 
and fully commensurate to the wants of the horse. 
Vomits through the \ ose .—It is also sufficiently evident, that, 
in the act of vomiting, the contents of the stomach must be 
returned through the nostril, and not through the mouth. The 
horse is with great difficulty excited to vomit. Do not mistake 
here ; the velum palati has nothing to do with this : but it depends 
on a singular construction of the cardiac orifice of the stomach, 
which I shall hereafter have to describe. This membrane regu¬ 
lates the passage or orifice through which the contents are dis¬ 
charged. It presents a mechanical obstruction to its return 
through the mouth, and which is only partially removed when 
the effort to vomit is unusually convulsive, or the power of every 
muscle and every membrane is relaxed. 
The interposed substance between these continuations of mem¬ 
brane I have stated to be cellular, muscular, and glandular ; the 
cellular, in its separate form, exists only in a slight degree; the 
muscular portion deserves a moment’s notice. 
Muscles of the Velum Palati. —The muscles of the palate are 
two. The first is the stylo-palati, the tensor palati in Mr. Perci- 
vall’s anatomy of the horse, as published in The Veterinarian. 
It is a beautiful muscle. Trace it from the styloid process of the 
temporal bone, closely united with, and seeming to form a 
common tendon with the stylo-pharyngeus, running along by the 
guttural pouch of the Eustachian tube, and, in some not well- 
defined way, influencing that auditory passage, and then passing 
through a curiously-formed cartilaginous loop at the extremity of 
the pterigoid process of the palatine bone, as perfect a pulley 
as ever was constructed ; it here turns round, and is inserted into 
the posterior lateral part of the velum, or rather ends in an apo¬ 
neurotic extension over it. This muscle tightens the palate, and so 
lifts the floating fringe of it. 
The other muscle is the circumfexus , arising from the border of 
the palatine bones, and diffused over the whole of the velum, to 
tighten and to elevate it. The office of both is united ; the first 
tightens the velum, and enables it to afford resistance to substances 
pressing upon it, and in doing so, in some measure elevates it; the 
second, while it likewise tightens the palate, elevates the border 
still higher. 
The velum palati in the ox does not descend so low r , and there 
is sufficient room left between it and the larynx for the purpose 
of breathing, and for the regurgitation of the food ; and in con¬ 
formity with this you will see that the tensor muscle is not so 
large, but the circumflexus is more developed and stronger. There is 
VOL. V. | 
