"In all ruminants, the food, when swallowed, passes into the first
stomach; it is then brought up to be chewed again; this is called
'chewing the cud.' You must often have seen a cow or a sheep sitting
quiet in the sun and constantly chewing."

"Yes," replied Lucien, "and l'Encuerado always told me that they had
eaten some bitter herb."

"His explanation is about as correct as that given by the Mexicans, who
say that an animal which chews the cud is reading the newspaper. Another
characteristic of these animals is, that their feet are cloven."

"And they have horns!" cried Lucien.

"Not all of them; for instance, the camel, llama, and musk-deer, are
exceptions."

It remained for us to decide how our fawn should be cooked. After a
discussion on the subject, we left the point entirely to l'Encuerado,
and I made my way down to the bottom of the ravine. Upon lifting up some
stones and pieces of bark, I discovered several species of the
_Carabus_ family. Lucien caught on a shrub some insects of a very
peculiar shape; at the first glance, Sumichrast recognized them as
_tettigones_.

"These insects belong to the _Hemeptera_ family," said he, "therefore
they are allied to the bug and the grasshopper; these insects have
neither mandibles[O] nor jaws; their mouth is a sort of beak, formed of
a jointed tube extending along the breast, which you can see very
plainly. This order is a very numerous one, and the two species you have
just found are peculiar to Mexico."

"Here is one like a fowl, and another like a canoe."

"You are quite right, and you will meet with others which are still more
singular looking."

The appearance of these little creatures pleased Lucien very much, and,
as he was letting them run about on his hand, he saw them jump off and
disappear. He was just going to return to the shrub on which he had
caught them, when his attention was attracted by an immense dragon-fly,
commonly called in Mexico _the devil's horse_, and in France
_demoiselle_. The beautiful insect, after flying round and round,
settled on a plant, and was immediately caught in the young hunter's
net. The prisoner had greenish eyes, a yellow body, and its wings were
dotted over with black and scarlet. It doubled back its tapering body,
as if to try and sting the hand which held it, and shook its gauzy wings
with a kind of metallic sound. A half-eaten mosquito hung out of its
mouth, and, although the dragon-fly was sadly bruised, it cont