quadrupeds; for among birds the ostrich has two ventricles, and among fishes the stomateus hiatola. The horse and ass, on the contrary, though graminivorous quadrupeds like the ox, have only one stomach. There may seem, perhaps, something playful in this application of different systems of mechanism to the same class of animals, and of the same system to different classes: but it shows us, at least, that the hand of nature is not necessarily fettered by its own general laws, nor compelled, even under the same circumstances, to adopt the same cause to produce the same effect. Yet, if we had time, we might proceed beyond this remark, and point out, if I mistake not, the reasons for such diversities, and the skill with which they are introduced. Thus the horse and ass are formed for activity, and require lightness; and hence the bulk and complexity of three or four stomachs would counteract the object for which they are created; but it does not interfere with the pursuits of the ox, which is heavy and indolent in its nature; and which, though it may perhaps be employed as a beast of burden, can never be made use of for speed. The activity of the horse and ass, moreover, excites, from the stimulus it produces, a larger secretion of gastric juice than is met with in the ox, and thus in a considerable degree supplies a substitute for the three deficient stomachs; but it by no means extracts the nutriment so entirely from the food introduced into it; and we hence see the reason why the dung of horses is richer than that of black cattle, and why they require three or four times as much provender. We may apply the whole of these remarks to the ostrich, whose peculiar habitation is the sandy and burning deserts of the torrid zone, where not a blade of grass is to be seen for hundreds of miles, and where the little food it lights upon must be made the most of. The double stomach it possesses enables it to accomplish this purpose, and to digest coarse grass, prickly shrubs, and scattered pieces of leather, with equal ease. This animal is supposed to be one of the most stupid in nature, and to have no discernment in the choice of its food; for it swallows stone, glass, iron, and whatever else comes in its way, along with its proper sustenance. But it is easy to redeem the ostrich from such a reproach, at least in the instance before us; for these very articles, by their hard and indestructible property, perform the office of teeth in the animal's stomach; they enable it to triturate its food most minutely, and to extract its last particle of nutriment. It is true that in the class of birds, or that to which the ostrich belongs, a double stomach must necessarily, to a certain extent, oppose the general levity by which this class is usually characterized. But the wings of the ostrich are not designed for flight they assist him in that rapidity of running for which he is so celebrated, and in which he exceeds all other animals, but are not designed to lift him from the earth. In reality, the ostrich appears to be the connecting link between birds and quadrupeds, and especially ruminant quadrupeds. In its general portrait, as well as in the structure of its stomach, it has a near resemblance to the camel; in its voice, instead of a whistle, it has a grunt, like that of the hog; in its disposition, it is as easily tamed as the horse, and like him may be employed, and often has been, as a racer, though in speed it outstrips the swiftest race-horse in the world. Adanson asserts, indeed, that it will do so when made to carry double; and that, when at the factory of Podore, he had two ostriches carefully broken in, the strongest of which, though young, would run swifter, with two negroes on his back, than a racer of the best breed. Yet widely different is the mechanism of the stomach in birds of flight that feed on vegetables: nor could any contrivance be better adapted to unite the two characters of strength and levity. Instead of the bulky and complicated compartments of the membranous stomach of ruminant animals, we here meet with a thick, tough, muscular texture, small in size, but more powerful than the stoutest jaw-bone, and which is usually called GIZZARD. It consists of four distinct muscles, a large hemispherical pair at the sides, and two smaller muscles at the two ends of the cavity. These muscles are • Valisnieri, Anatomia, &c. p. 159, 1713. distinguished from the rest belonging to the animal, not less by their colour than by their prodigious strength; and the internal cuticle with which they are covered is peculiarly callous, and often becomes quite horny from pressure and friction. The gizzard of grazing birds, as the goose and turkey, differs in some degree in the formation of its muscles from that of granivorous. They have also "a swell in the lower part of the esophagus, which answers the purpose of a reservoir, in which the grass is retained, macerated, and mixed with the secretions poured out by the glandular surfaces surrounding it, in this respect corresponding to the first and second stomachs of ruminating animals, in which the grass is prepared for mastification,"* though essentially lighter. This In most birds, indeed, we meet with an approach towards this, in a cavity situated above the muscular stomach, and called the crop, or craw. first receives the food from the mouth, and slightly softens it by a mucous fluid secreted from its interior; and thus prepared, a part of it is given back to the young, where there are young to partake of it, and the rest is sent to the gizzard or proper stomach, whose muscular mechanism, in conjunction with its gastric juice, soon comminutes it into the most impalpable pulp. There are several kinds, however, that, like the ostrich, endeavour to assist the muscular action by swallowing pebbles or gravel; some of which find this additional aid so indispensable, that they are not able to digest their food, and grow lean without it. Spallanzani attempted to prove that these stones are of no use, and are only swallowed by accident; but their real advantage has been completely established by Mr. J. Hunter, who has correctly observed, that the larger the gizzards, the larger are the pebbles found in them. In the gizzard of a turkey he counted two hundred; in that of a goose, a thousand. Reaumur and Spallanzani have put the prodigious power of this muscular stomach to the test, by compelling geese and other birds to swallow needles, lancets, and other hard and pointed substances; which, in every experiment, were found, a few hours afterward, on killing and examining the animal, or on its regorging them, to be broken off and blunted, without any injury to stomach whatever. Yet, as all animals are not designed for all kinds of food, neither the force of the strongest muscular fibres, nor the solvent power of the most active gastric juice, will avail in every instance. The wild-boar and the vulture devour the rattlesnake uninjured, and fatten upon it; but there are many kinds of vegetables which neither of these are capable of digesting. The owl digests flesh and bone, but cannot be made to digest grain or bread; and in one instance died, under the experiments of Spallanzani, when confined to vegetable food. The falcon seems as little capable of dissolving vegetables; yet the eagle dissolves bread and bone equally; and wood-pigeons may, in like manner, be brought to live, and even to thrive, on flesh meat. The procellaria pelagica, or stormy petrel, lives entirely on oil, as the fat of dead whales and other fishes, whenever he can get it; and if not, converts every thing he swallows into oil. He discharges pure oil from his mouth at objects that offend him; and feeds his young with the same substance. This is the most daring of all birds in a tempest, though not more than six inches long. As soon as the clouds begin to collect, he quits his rocky covert, and enjoys the gathering and magnificent scenery: he rides triumphantly on the whirlwind, and skims with incredible velocity the giddiest peaks and deepest hollows of the most tremendous waves. His appearance is a sure presage of foul weather to the seaman. There are some tribes of animals that appear capable of subsisting on water alone, and a few on mere air, incapable as these substances seem to be, at first sight, of affording any thing like solid nutriment. Leeches and tadpoles present us with familiar proofs of the former assertion, and there are various kinds of fishes that may be added to the catalogue. Rondelet kept a silver fish in pure water alone for three years; and at the end of that period it had ⚫ Home, On the Gizzards of Grazing Birds, Phil. Trans. 1810, p. 183 grown as large as the glass globe that contained it. Several species of the carp kind, and especially the gold-fish, have a similar power; and even the pike, the most gluttonous, perhaps, of the whole class, will both live and thrive upon water alone in a marble basin. The bee, and various other insects, derive their nutriment from the nectar and effluvium of flowers. So also does the trochilus genus, or hummingbird, which appears to be the connecting link between the two classes; buzzing like the bee itself with a joyous hum around the blossom on which it lights; and in one of its species, t. minimus, not exceeding it in size, and only weighing from 20 to 45 grains. Air alone appears sufficient for the support of animals of other kinds. Snails and chameleons have been known repeatedly to live upon nothing else for years.* Garman asserts that it is a sufficient food for spiders; and that though they will devour other food, as fishes will that may be maintained alone on water, they do not stand in need of any other. Latreille confirms this assertion to a considerable extent, by informing us that he stuck a spider to a piece of cork, and precluded it from communication with any thing else for four successive months, at the end of which time it appeared to be as lively as ever. And Mr. Baker tells us, in the Philosophical Transactions, that he had a beetle that lived in a glass confinement for three years without food, and then fled away by accident. The larves of ants, as well as of several other insects of prey, are not only supported by air, but actually increase in bulk, and undergo their metamorphosis without any other nourishment. It is probable, also, that air is at times the only food of the scolopendra phosphorea, or luminous centipede, which has been seen illuminating the atmosphere, and sometimes falling into a ship, a thousand miles from land. Amphibious animals have a peculiar tenacity to life under every circumstance of privation; and not only frogs and toads, but tortoises, lizards, and serpents are well known to have existed for months, and even years, without other food than water-in some instances, without other food than air. Mr. Bruce kept two cerastes, or horned snakes, in a glass jar for two years, without giving them any thing. He did not observe that they slept in the winter-season; and they cast their skins, as usual, on the last day of April.‡ Lizards, and especially the newt species, have been found imbedded in a chalk-rock, apparently dead and fossilized, but have reassumed living action on exposure to the atmosphere. On their detection in this state the mouth is usually closed with a glutinous substance, and closed so tenaciously, that they often die of suffocation in the very effort to extricate themselves from this material. In respect to toads the same fact has been ascertained, for nearly two years, by way of experiment ;P and has been verified, by accident, for a much longer term of time. The late Edward Walker, Esq., of Guestingthorpe, Essex, informed me, not long since, that he had found a toad perfectly alive in the midst of a full-grown elm, after it was cut down by his order, exactly occupying the cavity which it appeared gradually to have scooped out as it grew in size, and which had not the smallest external communication by any aperture that could be traced. And very explicit, and apparently very cautious, accounts have been repeatedly published in different journals, of their having been found alive, imbedded in the very middle of trunks of trees and blocks of marble, so large and massy, that, if the accounts be true, they must have been in such situations for at least a century.** There is a very particular case of this kind given by M. Seigue, in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Paris.tt Encyclop Brit. art. Physiol. p. 679. ↑ Monthly Rev. Appx. lv. 494. Wilkinson, Tilloch's Phil. Mag. Dec. 1816 See Dalyell's Introd. to his Translation of Spallanzani's Tracts, p. xliii. 1803. ** See various instances, Encycl. Brit. art. Physiol. p. 681. † Mem. 1731, H. 24. Dr. Edwards, of Paris has sufficiently ascertained of late, that blocks of mortar These observations lead us to another anomaly of a more extraordinary nature still; and that is, the power which man himself possesses of existing without food, under certain circumstances, for a very long period of time. This is often found to take place in cases of madness, especially that of the melancholy kind, in which the patient resolutely refuses either to eat or drink for many weeks together, with little apparent loss either of bulk or strength. There is a singular history of Cicely de Ridgeway, preserved among the Records in the Tower of London, which states, that in the reign of Edward III., having been condemned for the murder of her husband, she remained for forty days without either food or drink. This was ascribed to a miracle, and the king condescended in consequence to grant a pardon. The Cambridgeshire farmer's wife, who, about twenty years ago, was buried under a snow-storm, continued ten or twelve days without tasting any thing but a little of the snow which covered her. But in various other cases we have proofs of abstinence from food having been carried much farther, and without serious evil. In the Edinburgh Medical Essays for 1720, Dr. Eccles makes mention of a beautiful young lady, "about sixteen years of age," who, in consequence of the sudden death of an indulgent father, was thrown into a state of tetanus, or rigidity of all the muscles of the body, and especially those of deglutition, so violent as to render her incapable of swallowing for two long and distinct periods of time; in the first instance for thirty-four, and in the second, which occurred shortly afterward, for fifty-four days; during "all which time, her first and second fastings, she declared," says Dr. Eccles, “she had no sense of hunger or thirst; and when they were over, she had not lost much of her flesh." In our own day we have had nearly as striking an instance of this extraordinary fact, in the case of Ann Moore, of Tutbury, in Staffordshire, who, in consequence of a great and increasing difficulty in swallowing, at first limited herself to a very small daily portion of bread alone, and on March 17th, 1807, relinquished even this, allowing herself only occasionally a little tea or water, and in the ensuing September pretended to abstain altogether from liquids as well as solids. From the account of Mr. Granger, a medical practitioner of reputation, who saw her about two years afterward, she appears to have suffered very considerably, either from her abstinence or from that general morbid habit which induced her to use abstinence. He says, indeed, that her mental faculties were entire, her voice moderately strong, and that she could join in conversation without undergoing any apparent fatigue: but he says, also, that her pulse was feeble and slow; that she was altogether confined to her bed; that her limbs were extremely emaciated; that convulsions attacked her on so slight an excitement as surprise, and that she had then very lately lost the use of her lower limbs. It afterward appeared, that in this account of herself she was guilty of some degree of imposition, in order to attract visiters, and obtain pecuniary grants. Dr. Henderson, another medical practitioner, of deserved repute in the neighbourhood, had suspected this, and published his suspicions:† and an and heaps of sand are porous enough to admit so much air as is requisite to support the life of lizards, toads, and other amphibials of the batrachian family: but that they all perish if surrounded by mercury, or even water, so as to intercept the air by their being encompassed by an exhausted receiver. In boxes of mortar or sand, however, they live much longer than in boxes plunged under water. The probable cause is, that the air of the atmosphere pervades the pores of the sand or margin pretty freely; but that it is not extricated from the circumfluent water so as to pervade the pores of the box buried in it. This, however, is not the explanation offered by Dr. Edwards. He found also that frogs will live a longer or shorter period of time under water, according to the temperature of the water, and the previous temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. They die speedily if the water be lower than 32° Fahr. or higher than 108 that the longest duration of life is at 32, at which point life will continue for several hours; that its duration diminishes with the elevation of the scale above this point, and that it is extinguished in a few minutes at 108. The most favourable point in the temperature of the atmosphere is also 32°. If the season have main tained this point for some days autecedently to the frog's being plunged under water, itself of 329, the animal will live from 24 to 60 hours. De l'Influence des Agens Physiques sur la Vie; also, Mémoires sur l'Asphyxie, &c. 1817. Paris, 8vo. 1824. Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal, No. xix. July, 1809, p. 319. An Examination of the Imposture of Ann Moore, called the Fasting Woman of Tutbury, &c. By Alexander Henderson, M.D. 8vo 1813. intelligent committee was at length arranged, and assented to by the woman herself, for the purpose of watching her by day and by night. Cut off hereby altogether from fluids, which she had of late pretended to relinquish, as well as from solids, she was hardly able to reach the tenth day, and still less to confess, as she then did, that she had occasionally been supplied by her daughter with water and tea. "On the whole," the committee conclude, in their account of her, "though this woman is a base impostor with respect to her pretence of total abstinence from all food whatever, liquid or solid, yet she can perhaps endure the privation of solid food longer than any other person. It is thought by those best acquainted with her, that she existed on a mere trifle, and that from hence came the temptation to say that she did not take any thing. If, therefore, any of her friends could have conveyed a bottle of water to her, unseen by the watch, and she could occasionally have drunk out of it, little doubt is entertained that she would have gone through the month's trial with credit. The daughter says that her mother's principal food is tea, and there is reason to believe this to be true."* But this opinion leaves the case almost as extraordinary as before the detection of the fraud; for if true, and it is greatly borne out by the fact to which it appeals, this woman was capable of subsisting on what is ordinarily regarded as no nutriment whatever, and required nothing more for her support than an occasional draught of pure water. Hildanus, Haller, and other physiologists have collected various instances of a similar kind: many of them of a much longer duration of abstinence; some of them, indeed, extending to not less than sixteen years; but in general too loosely written and attested to be entitled to full reliance. Yet the Philosophical Transactions in their different volumes contain numerous cases of the same kind, apparently drawn up with the most scrupulous caution, and supported by the best kind of concurrent evidence. In one of the earlier volumest we meet with an account of four men who were compelled to subsist upon water alone for twenty-four days, in consequence of their having been buried in a deep excavation by the fall of a superincumbent stratum of earth under which they were working, and it being this length of time before they were extricated. The water which they drank of was from a spring at hand; and they drank of it freely, but tasted nothing else. A still more extraordinary account is recorded in the same journal for the year 1742, and consists of the history of a young man, who, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, from having drunk very freely of cold water when in a violent perspiration, was thrown into an inflammatory fever, from which he escaped with difficulty, and with such a dislike to foods of all kinds, that for eighteen years, at the time this account was drawn up, he had never tasted any thing but water. The fact was well known throughout the neighbourhood; but an imposition having been suspected by several persons who saw him, he had been shut up at times in close confinement for twenty days at a trial, with the most scrupulous care that he should communicate with nothing but water. He uniformly enjoyed good health, and appears to have had ejections, but seldom. A multitude of hypotheses have been offered to account for these wonderful anomalies, but none of them do it satisfactorily; and I should be unworthy of the confidence you repose in me, if I did not ingenuously confess my utter ignorance upon the subject. Water in most cases appears to have been absolutely necessary, yet not in all; for Hildanus, who, though somewhat imaginative, appears to have been an honest and an able man in the main, assures us, that Eva Flegen, who had fasted for sixteen years when he saw her in 1612, had abstained entirely from liquids as well as solids: and in the case of impacted toads, especially those found in blocks of closely crystallized marble, the moisture they receive must often be very insignificant. A Full Exposure of Ann Moore, the pretended Fasting Woman of Tutbury, 8vo. 1813. The newspapers have informed us that this poor woman died at Macclesfield about the beginning of October, 1825, at the advanced age of seventy-six. † Phil. Trans. 1684. |