RULINGIA. 
furious pugnacity at the breeding season; and 
he has then a partial covering of red papille on 
his head, and a ruff or thick collar of feathers 
round his neck; and this ruff gives the popular 
name to the species, and is so variously coloured 
and arranged, and so fantastically diversified in the 
projecting position, as never to be quite alike in 
two individuals; and even the general plumage, 
at other seasons as well as the breeding one, ex- 
hibits so great diversity as to have led hasty 
naturalists into the describing of many imagi- 
nary species. The prevailing or most frequent 
colour of the head, ruff, and shoulders, is shining 
purplish black, barred with chestnut,—of the 
belly and the rump, white,—and of the rest of 
the plumage, chestnut, black, and brown; and 
the characters strictly permanent, or those at least 
by which the bird may always be identified, are 
yellowish feet, semi-palmated external toes, and 
a strictly sandpiper bill and carriage. The male 
has a total length of about 124 inches; and the 
female has a total length of about 105 inches, 
and is called a reeve. 
RULINGIA. A genus of ornamental, Austra- 
lian, evergreen, small, white-flowered shrubs, of 
the byttneria family. Four species, all about 2 
or 3 feet high, and propagable from cuttings, 
have been introduced to British collections, 
RUMBLING DRAIN. See Drarnina. 
RUMEN, or Pauncu. ‘The first of the four 
stomachs of a ruminating animal. It is situated 
immediately under the termination of the gullet ; 
and receives in a series of pellets, a large quantity 
of vegetable matters coarsely bruised by a first 
mastication; and serves by its heat, its mecha- 
nical action, and its somewhat scanty moisture, 
to prepare these matters for further change. It 
is externally divided into two saccular portions, 
and internally lined with a rough and papillously 
studded membrane; and it has a very extensile 
texture, and becomes by far the largest of the 
four stomachs, and is sometimes much stretched 
out by over-gorging, and in general assumes a 
capacity exactly suitable to the kind and the 
comparative bulkiness of the animal’s food. See 
the article RuminaTIon. 
RUMINANTS, or Rumrinantra. The family or 
RUMINATION. 
99 
varieties of tallow; and their hides, their horns, 
and their other parts all possess great economical 
value. Some of the living animals, also, particu- 
larly camels, are very valuable beasts of burden. 
RUMINATION. The remastication of food 
by a ruminant animal. Liquid or attenuated 
food passes at once into the third and fourth 
stomachs, and is not remasticated ; but all other 
food, particularly such as consists of compara- 
tively dry and solid vegetable matter, descends 
into the rumen, is there slowly macerated, passes 
by little and little into the second stomach, and 
is there separated by compression into a liquid 
and a solid portion,—the liquid to pass on to the 
third and the fourth stomachs, and the solid to 
be returned in pellets up the gullet for such re- 
mastication as shall reduce it to a pulp, and fit 
it to pass direct, by re-deglutition, into the third 
and the fourth stomachs. The remastication is 
effected while the animal lies at ease,—and con- 
stitutes what is popularly called ‘chewing the 
cud,’ —and takes place only upon matter which 
nothing short of an operose process can reduce 
to perfect pulpiness or liquidity; and the regorg- 
ing which attends it differs widely from the belch- 
ing or vomiting of a non-ruminant animal, and is 
as regularly conducted by a specially constituted 
organism as deglutition or absorption or secre- 
tion or any other ordinary act or function of the 
animal system. 
In order to understand the process of rumina- 
tion, we must advert to the manner in which 
the four stomachs communicate with the gullet, 
and with one another. The gullet is an exten- 
sile membranous tube, much more complicated 
in ruminating quadrupeds than in man, the 
muscles which surround it being strong, and 
consisting of two rows of fibres, crossing one an- 
other, and running spirally in opposite direc- 
tions; and these muscles, by their contractions, 
so powerfully force the morsel of food begun to 
be swallowed onwards into the inlet of the 
stomachs, that the process of deglutition once 
commenced cannot be stopped, even by the will 
of the animal. The gullet enters just where 
the first, second, and third stomachs approach 
one another, and discharges itself almost equally 
order of animals who have four stomachs, and | into the first and the second. Connected with 
who ruminate or remasticate their food. It is 
the most distinctly defined of all the families of 
mammals; and is also the most useful to man. 
Its genera are the ox, the sheep, the goat, the 
antelope, the giraffe, the stag, the musk, the llama, 
and the camel; and the fourth of these comprises 
also the gazelle, the chamois, the oryx, and the 
gnou. All the ruminants have a callous pad in- 
stead of incisors in the upper jaw, and are cloven- 
footed, and have four stomachs and a very long | 
intestinal canal, and have their mammz between 
the thighs. The flesh of ruminants furnishes all 
the principal kinds of meat used by man; their 
milk, especially that of the cow, supplies all the 
produce of the dairy; their fat affords all the 
it is another organ which may be termed the 
cud-duct. This is sometimes a groove and 
sometimes a tube, according to its action; and 
runs from the termination of the gullet to the 
third stomach, with the first stomach on the left, 
and the second on the right, and discharges it- 
self almost equally into the second and the third. 
It has thick prominent margins, which can be 
brought to meet so as to form a complete canal, 
and thus constitute a continuation of the gullet 
across the second stomach into the third. All 
these parts, the gullet, the cud-duct, the first, the 
second, and the third stomachs, not only com- | 
municate with one another, but all communicate 
by a common point, the point where the gullet 
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