then seeking a shady nook, indolently and luxuriously chows his cud with
closed eyes and blissful satisfaction, only rising when his delicious
repast is ended, to proceed silently and without emotion to repeat the
pleasing process of laying in more provender, and then returning to his
dreamy siesta to renew the delightful task of rumination. Such animals
are said to have a _lymphatic_ temperament, and are of so kindly a
nature, that on good pasturage they may be said to grow daily. The
Leicestershire breed is the best example of this lymphatic and contented
animal, and the active Orkney, who is half goat in his habits, of the
restless and unprofitable. The rich pasture of our midland counties
would take years in making the wiry Orkney fat and profitable, while one
day's fatigue in climbing rocks after a coarse and scanty herbage would
probably cause the actual death of the pampered and short-winded
Leicester.

681. THE MORE REMOVED FROM THE NATURE of the animal is the food on which
it lives, the more difficult is the process of assimilation, and the
more complex the chain of digestive organs; for it must be evident to
all, that the same apparatus that converts _flesh_ into _flesh_, is
hardly calculated to transmute _grass_ into flesh. As the process of
digestion in carnivorous animals is extremely simple, these organs are
found to be remarkably short, seldom exceeding the length of the
animal's body; while, where digestion is more difficult, from the
unassimilating nature of the aliment, as in the ruminant order, the
alimentary canal, as is the case with the sheep, is _twenty-seven times
the length of the body._ The digestive organ in all ruminant animals
consists of _four stomachs_, or, rather, a capacious pouch, divided by
doorways and valves into four compartments, called, in their order of
position, the Paunch, the Reticulum, the Omasum, and the Abomasum. When
the sheep nibbles the grass, and is ignorantly supposed to be eating, he
is, in fact, only preparing the raw material of his meal, in reality
only mowing the pasture, which, as he collects, is swallowed instantly,
passing into the first receptacle, the _paunch_, where it is surrounded
by a quantity of warm saliva, in which the herbage undergoes a process
of maceration or softening, till the animal having filled this
compartment, the contents pass through a valve into the second or
smaller bag,--the _reticulum_, where, having again filled the paunch
with a rese