THIS order of animals is known as the Ruminantia, or the Ruminant Order,
because all these animals possess the strange power of ruminating, or of
bringing back into their mouth (in order to re-chew it), the food that
they have once swallowed.
This power is owing to a complicated structure of their stomach, which
is divided into several compartments, and which have been considered,
though with some exaggeration, as so many distinct stomachs. The first
and largest of these divisions is the paunch, which occupies a large
portion of the abdomen. The food is here accumulated after being roughly
crushed by the first chewing. After the paunch comes the bonnet or cap
stomach. In this cap the food is gradually moulded into small pellets,
which ascend again into the mouth, by means of a natural movement, and
not a convulsive or irregular one as in other animals; these pellets
then undergo a thorough chewing and mixing with the saliva. Such is
“chewing the cud.”
When the food, thus transformed into a soft and nearly fluid paste
descends again into the stomach, it goes straight into a third intestine
and from this it at length passes into the digesting stomach or
rennet-bag.
The feet of all these animals terminate in two toes which are joined
together in a bone called the shank. Sometimes also there exists at the
back of the foot two small spurs or toes. In all these animals except
the Camels and Llamas—the hoofs, which entirely cover the last joint of
the two toes on each foot, act side by side on a smooth surface, and
resemble one single but cloven hoof. Thus the origin of the word
cloven-hoofed.
The Ruminants are divided in various ways by different Naturalists. Some
are satisfied with the division simply into Horned and Hornless
Ruminants. But the best classification is into the two large families of
the Camels and Common Ruminants. The Camel family includes the Camels
and Dromedaries—the beasts of burden in dessert lands, and the Llama,
etc., the beast of burden among the mountains.
The Common Ruminants are divided into three tribes—those with hairy and
permanent horns, those with hollow-horns, and those that shed their
horns.