Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 1.djvu/263

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The camel, on which Mr. Home’s observations were made, was a female, twenty—eight years old, and was brought from Arabia. It drank regularly, every second day, six gallons of water, sometimes seven and a half; but would not drink in the intervening period. It daily consumed a peck of oats, one of diaﬁ, and one third of a truss of hay. It was killed on the ﬁrst of April last, by thrusting a double- edged poniard between the skull and the ﬁrst vertebra of the neck; it had a few hours before drank three gallons of water.

A very particular account of the animal's various stomachs, and of those of the bullock, together with the mode in which the food suc- cessively passes into them, is now given. From these (which our limits necessarily oblige us to omit,) it appears, that in the bullock there are three stomachs for the preparation of the food, and one for its digestion; whereas, in the camel, there is one stomach that an- swers the purpose of the two ﬁrst of the bullock; a second employed merely as a reservoir for water, a third so small and simple in the structure of its internal membrane, that it can answer no purpose except that of retarding the progress of the food, and making it pass into the fourth stomach by small portions (for as it is not lined with a cuticle, it cannot be compared to any of the preparatory stomachs of the bullock), and a fourth, or true digesting stomach.

It appears, from our author's examination, that the camel, when it drinks, conducts the water in a pure state into the second stomach; that part of it is retained there, and the rest runs over into the ﬁrst stomach, acquiring a yellow colour in its course. This purity of the water in the second stomach is a well-known fact; but by what means the water was kept separate from the food, had never been explained; nor had any other part been discovered by which the common ofﬁces of a second stomach could be performed. For Mr. Home’s explanation of the mode in which the former is effected, we must refer to the paper itself, and especially to the ﬁgures of the parts with which it is accompanied.

From the facts stated by our author, the following gradation of ruminating stomachs is established by him.

Those ruminants which have horns, as the bullock, sheep, &c., have two preparatory stomachs for the food previous to rumination, and one for the food to be received in after rumination.

The ruminants that have no horns, as the camel, dromedary, llama, &c., have one preparatory stomach for the food before rumi. nation, but none in which it can be properly said to be afterwards retained, before it passes into the digesting stomach.

Those animals that eat the same kind of food as the ruminants, but do not ruminate, as the horse and ass, have only one stomach; but a part of it is lined with a cuticle: in this part the food is ﬁrst