riedly and retire to a safe place to chew it. Rudiments of the upper incisors are present in the jaw of the calf, showing the descent from animals which had a complete set of teeth. The rudiments are absorbed and the upper jaw of the cow lacks incisors entirely, as they would be useless because of the cow's habit of seizing the grass with her rough tongue and cutting it with the lower incisors as the head is jerked forward. This is a more rapid way of eating than by biting. Which leaves the grass shorter after grazing, a cow or a horse? Why? Grass is very slow of digestion, and the ungulates have an alimentary canal twenty to thirty times the length of the body. Thorough chewing is necessary for such coarse food, and the ungulates which chew the cud (ruminants) are able, by leisurely and thorough chewing, to make the best use of the woody fiber (cellulose) which is the chief substance in their food.
 | An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|First course in biology (IA firstcourseinbio00bailrich).pdf/451}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
Fig. 386.—Skeleton of Cow. Compare with horse (Fig. 395) as to legs, toes, tail, mane, dewlap, ears, body.
Ruminants have four divisions to the stomach. Their food is first swallowed into the roomy paunch in which, as in the crop of a bird, the bulky food is temporarily stored. It is not digested at all in the paunch, but after being moistened, portions of it pass successively into the honeycomb, which forms it into balls to be belched up and ground by the large molars as the animal lies with eyes half closed under the shade of a tree. It is then swal-
