his body, close to the extremity of the oesophagus, whose lower wall, being slit at that part, becomes an imperfectly secure tube, ready to burst open under pressure, and allow the food to escape between the edges of the slit; these, otherwise, remaining naturally closed. As soon as the large bundles of grass come to this part, they press against the walls of the tube, which they by this means separate, and fall into the provision-pouch, which bears the name of paunch, or grass-pocket, in fact. As soon as the paunch is well filled, and the animal sure of his dinner, he lies down in some quiet corner, where he proceeds gravely with the important act, which is the real object of his existence. A little below the entrance to the paunch, and communicating both with it and the canal of the œsophagus, is a second receptacle, which old French naturalists, not being much acquainted with Greek, named the cap, on account of its fancied resemblance to the caps worn on the head, and which we call 'king's hood' or 'honey-comb bag.' This second stomach now contracts (at least so it is supposed), and thus retains, as if with a closed fist, a portion of the grass accumulated in the paunch of this it forms a pellet, which it sends back into the oesophagus, and the œsophagus, by continued contractions from below upwards, returns it to the mouth, where at last the grassy lump is chewed in good earnest, and to some purpose. There is no necessity for hurry; the ruminant has no other business on the face of the earth but this, and thus hour after hour passes away, the food pellets rising one after another to the onslaught of the teeth. Nor do they go back again until they have been reduced by long mastication into an almost liquid paste, which glides through the oesophagus without forcing open the slit, and falls straight into a third pouch, called by old Frenchmen the

leaf, on account of certain large folds, somewhat like the leaves of a book, which line the interior; and known to us as the manyplies. From this stomach, No. 3, this grass-pap passes into a fourth and last bag, which is the real stomach, and where the final work of digestion is accomplished. This fourth pouch also has a pretty little name of the old-fashioned sort, like the three others; it is called the reed or rennet-bag, from the property it possesses, in the calf, of turning milk into curds: and of his four stomachs this is the only one which the ruminant makes use of at first. As long as the young ani mal is nursed by its mother, the other compartments remain inactive and small in size; they neither grow nor exercise their functions until it begins to eat grass. Indeed, they would probably entirely disappear, if any one would go to the expense of keeping the animal on milk all its life. If it ceased to have anything to ruminate, nature would certainly lose no time in relieving it of its useless workshop of rumination.

As it is right to give every one his due, I will mention that we owe our accurate knowledge of this simple and ingenious mechanism of rumination to the labors of Flourens, a scientific Frenchman, who is still alive, and who has made a great many interesting inquiries into the subject we are now considering, i. e., the life of animals. He is a very clever man into the bargain-so perfect a master of his own language, that the French Academy has felt itself justified in opening its doors to him an unheard-of honor for a member of the Academy of Sciences. And yet, in spite of all this, I heartily congratulate you that the discovery of the paunch, the cap, the leaf, and the rennet-bag, was not delayed for his arrival. He is just the man who might have been tempted, in his capacity of profound scholar, to have

hunted up for them in the Jardin des racines grecques*; four magnificent names, which would only have bewil dered you.

Beyond the rennet-bag there is no change of confor mation to note, except that the intestinal tube is naturally much longer than ours, on account of the difference of food as a general rule, it is ten or twelve times the length of the body. The sheep, who is able to pick up a living in the poorest pastures, is indebted for this inestimable power, which makes him the special blessing of dry and barren countries, to a still further peculiarity of organization; with him the intestinal tube is twenty-eight times the length of the body.

We have seen among the Carnivora, whose jaws have so much work to do, that the condyles of the jawbone are sunk deeply into the fossa of the temporal bone. The ruminant, whose peaceful mouth is formed for contending only with grass, is organized quite differently. Here the condyle is flattened, and the fossa of the temporal bone very shallow, presenting to the condyle an almost flat surface, so that the jawbone is enabled to revolve with ease for the better mastication of the pellets of grass. This conformation is also to be seen in the pachydermata who feed upon vegetables. In the horse, especially, whose food is almost the same as that of the ox, the articulation (as this joining of the condyle to the temporal bone is called) of the jaw, is also nearly identical; and it is the same with the teeth, with very trifling variations, those of all ruminants are constructed

* Your brother can tell you about the Jardin des racines grecques. It is a charming little book, of which every generation of collegians has learnt, by heart, the commencement; but I have never known one, even among the most intrepid, who had ever been to the end of it.

on the same plan as in the horse. The canines only require a separate notice.

But first I must tell you that, by some special privi lege, the reason for which I do not undertake to explain, the order of ruminants is the only one containing animals with horns on their foreheads. Stags, goats, reindeer, chamois, gazelles, roebucks, oxen, buffaloes, all the beasts with horned foreheads, belong to the ruminants. Indeed, this fact would form a very convenient mark of distinc tion between them and other, animals, were there not exceptions to it. Some ruminants have no horns; and then, as if in compensation for the deficiency, we find them provided with canines in the upper jaw, in addition to those below.

The ruminant which has the most beautiful canines is the musk-deer, a pretty little animal inhabiting the highlands of Central Asia, like the chamois of the Alps. But now that you know who he is, you will probably often be tempted to wish he had never existed; for it is from a small pouch below his belly that people obtain that odious musk of which Oriental beautics are so fond, and which even certain strong-nerved ladies of our own country are guilty of using in public, to the great detriment of general health. But enough of this; our business is with the canines of the musk-deer. They project with a descending curve from the upper jaw, and would give the animal the very false appearance of a small wild boar, but for the great delicacy of its legs, which are more slender than even those of our roebuck, to whom, with the exception of the horns, it bears a close resemblance, as its name implies.

After the musk-deer comes the large family of camels and llamas, which represent the former in Asia and Africa, the latter in America-the irregular groups of

ruminants which have canines instead of horns, and which seem to be placed as intermediates between true ruminants and the pachydermata. They form the connecting link between the horse and the ox, and men prefer employing them as beasts of burden to using them as butcher's meat; though one could eat them in their own country with less disgust than Europeans feel in making a meal of horseflesh; so that they might be a very acceptable resource in many cases. The real fact is, that ruminants with horns and without upper canines have more delicate flesh than the others, and seem more especially destined to be eaten. Yet if one had only to look at the stomach, which is, after all, the distinctive characteristic of the order, camels and llamas would stand in the first rank as ruminants. Besides the usual character of four stomachs, their paunch and honeycombbag are furnished with lage cells which act as reservoirs, and fill with water whenever the animal has the chance of drinking freely, and from whence in time of drought he draws it up into his mouth and swallows it. This is what makes the camel so valuable to the wandering tribes in the great deserts of Africa and Asia. He is the only animal who can pass several days under the burning sun of Sahara without drinking-or rather without appearing to do so-for he carries his provision of water concealed from all eyes in the recesses of his body. I dare say you have often heard stories of Arabs dying of thirst who have opened the stomachs of their camels in search of a last draught of water. It must be a terrible thirst to drive a man to such an extremity; for, as you may imagine, one could not expect the water there to be either fresh or clear, to say nothing of the great risk there would generally be of finding the reservoir empty. Such an extreme is never resorted