the Stomach of the Lama. 325 
1. Stomach of the Camel. 
The peculiar anatomy of the camel’s stomach, is by no means a 
discovery of modern times.’ Perrault, in the Memoirs of the French 
Academy, describes the stomach of the camel with great care ; but 
it was reserved for Daubenton to finish a monograph, which, for 
accuracy of detail and shrewdness of observation, cannot be ex- 
celled. 
The facts discovered by Daubenton, were re-examined very late- 
ly by Sir E. Home, and found to be strictly accordant with nature. 
The learned and modest assistant of Buffon, had absolutely omitted. 
nothing. M. Cuvier, however, has not deemed it necessary to quote 
Daubenton’s description in his great work on comparative anatomy, 
and has given us, in its place, the dissection of the stomach of the 
foetus of a lama. 
But first with regard to the dissections of Perrault, and of his 
collaborateurs, the Parisian dissectors, as they are sometimes called. 
« The ventricle (say they) which was very large, and divided 
into four, as.in the other animals which ruminate, had not that dif- 
ferent structure which is observed in the stomachs of the strictly 
ruminants, or oxen and sheep; the divisions were only distin- 
guished by some contractions which made that the first ventricle, 
which is large and vast, produced another very small one, which 
was followed by a third, which was somewhat less than the first, but 
much longer, and this was followed by a fourth like to the second. 
“* At the top of the second ventricle, there were several square 
holes, which were the orifices of about twenty cavities, made like 
sacs placed between the two membranes which compose the sub- 
stance of this ventricle. The view of these sacs made us think that 
they might be the reservoirs where Pliny says that camels keep a 
long time the water, which they drink in great abundance when 
they meet with it, to supply the wants which they may have there- 
of jn the dry deserts, where they are used to travel, and where, it 
is said, that those who guide them are sometimes forced, .by extre- 
mity of thirst, to open their belly, in which they find water.” 
We do not find, in this description, that remarkable accuracy 
and minuteness which so generally characterizes these Memoirs. 
They have not stated, as they ought to have done, what was 
afterwards discovered and perfectly described by Daubenton, that 
the distended stomach presents an appearance of four stomachs, but 
when opened there are found to be five: that the paunch abounds 
with large cells as well as the second stomach, (which Daubenton 
called the reservoir:) that the third stemach, which also was de- 
scribed by Daubenton, is exceedingly small, and forms a kind of 
rudiment of the king’s hood. 
Moreover, he explained very beautifully the structure of those 
deep square cells in the apertures, surrounded by bundles of mus- 
cular fibres, in which he says he found abundance of fluid, a struc- 
ture which seems to retain the water like a sponge: two or three 
