204 DISEASE IN WILD MAMMALS AND BIRDS 
ward, forms a long loop enclosing the pancreas, its distal 
end lying under the liver and near the gall-bladder. Near 
its end it receives the major bile and pancreatic ducts; 
smaller ducts from the liver and pancreas may enter near 
the pylorus or elsewhere along the loop. The small 
intestine is usually simple in its coils, but in the birds 
that eat grain, grass and greens, may be long and compli- 
cated. So too the colon, usually a very short segment, 
may be increased in the just mentioned group while the 
ceca are only of any considerable length in herbivorous 
birds. The length of the ceca is, according to Owen, 
related to the availability of food and the need the bird 
may have for exhausting the nutritive value of it. In 
carnivorous birds as in similar mammals, the whole gut, 
but especially the hind-gut, is very short and the ceca 
small or absent. But so they are in picarian birds which 
are chiefly herbivorous, but may eat meat. 
Gastritis. 
The double-muscle stomach, that with the two lateral 
plates and tough epidermal internal coating, is seldom 
the seat of disease. An excess of greens in the diet some- 
times seems to soften or macerate the lining, while an 
excess of pebbles may cause erosions. Upon severe irri- 
tation this internal layer assumes the appearance of 
tanned leather and may crack. The proventricle of such 
a gizzard seems rather resistant to disease, particularly 
one would say, to infective processes, for catarrhal or 
ulcerative inflammation is uncommon. The saccular 
stomach with uniform muscular walls continuous with 
those of the proventricle, such as is seen in raptatory 
birds and parrots, offers a somewhat different picture. 
The internal membranes of these organs are definitely 
softer, seeming to swell with great ease, and the glands 
themselves are smaller both at the fundus and outlet, a 
construction which may favor their closure by swelling 
from simple congestion and edema. Catarrhal and ulcer- 
