History of All Cloven-Hoofed Quadrupeds

Book 10, ch. 73

is not foreign [to the matter]: for Pliny noted that our common mice have teeth of this kind. He also records in Book 11, Chapter 37, that elephants have four stomachs, although no one has ever said that they ruminate.

Why the hare ruminates.

Book 5, Var. lect. ch. 15.

Furthermore, we read in the sacred scriptures that the hare and the rabbit ruminate, and it appears very likely that they do ruminate. For the hare, as the Philosopher reports, possesses rennet, which is characteristic of ruminants; moreover, both of them are the only animals among the toed quadrupeds that feed upon grass. Girolamo Mercuriali thinks that animals of this kind (the rabbit, the hare, and the Pontic mouse) could not have several stomachs because they are small animals. For we see (he says) that whatever animals possess them are either large or at least not small. But because they have a stomach that is by no means thick, but thin and devoid of fat (for Pliny said that the hare and the rabbit do not grow fat, and the senses confirm this), they therefore do not easily endure food that is otherwise soft, especially when it is taken in large quantities and is not well prepared by the teeth, but is immediately swallowed out of fear. Because of this, the burdened stomach sends that food back into the mouth, where it is prepared again to the extent that it can be easily digested by the stomach. Indeed, as we see in dissections, since nature had given the hare and the rabbit a slender stomach covered with very thin membranes and skin, and could not give them four stomachs, she did two things to compensate for this in another way: first, in place of a single stomach, she provided them with slender intestines; then, the cecum, which she made small in others, she made the largest and most capacious of all in these, so that it might be as it were a certain final stomach where the chyle might be perfected; for an intestine of this kind is always found full of chylous matter.

The hare and rabbit do not have four stomachs. Book 11, ch. 37.

Why the elephant has four stomachs.

Pliny’s error. 2. de hist. 2. book 11. 37.

However, as for the fact that the elephant has four stomachs (Mercuriali says in the same place), the cause could be the magnitude of its body and perhaps the fewness of the upper teeth, of which it is found—both by the authority of the ancients and by experience—to have only four. Although it is better that we admit Pliny erred, since he misunderstood Aristotle, who writes that the intestines of the elephant are so sinuous that it seems to have four stomachs; just as he was likewise deceived when he said that ruminants have a double stomach. Thus far Mercuriali; and while the reasons which this most learned man brings forward regarding the ruminations of the hare and the rabbit are by no means to be despised, on the other hand, it is not yet clear why mice, and especially Pontic ones, ruminate: for since these are among the animals that remain hidden in winter, reason itself suggests that they grow fat. Now indeed, among the true ruminants, Joannes Aemylianus says in Syntagma 8 that rumination is more suited to the ox than to the other ruminants, as is more than sufficiently known from the verses which Homer once sang—under the persona of the indignant Sun, not Ulysses, as he himself says—addressing Jove and the whole assembly of the gods:

Odyssey, Book 12.

Where, he says, Homer wrote for the oxen ἐπιεικέ' ἀμοιβήν, that is, a useful and fitting rumination. But if we interpret Homer in this sense, his verses will have no meaning at all. The Sun, or Apollo, was complaining that his oxen had been killed by the companions of Ulysses, and he threatens Jove and the other immortal gods that unless they avenge the death of those oxen, he will descend to the underworld and provide his light only to the dead; wherefore the Latin translators of Homer render it thus:

But if they do not pay me a worthy retribution for the oxen,
I shall descend to the house of Pluto, and shine among the dead.

Therefore, although ἀμοιβὴ can be taken for rumination—for it also signifies change, and likewise alternation, and rumination is a certain kind of alternation—yet here, as I was saying, it makes no sense. But that rumination belongs to the ox above all others, I willingly admit and agree.

Book 6, ch. 6.

For Columella also, reviewing the signs of a failing ox, says: On account of which the ox neither ruminates nor cleans itself with its tongue: for that man most expert in rustic matters was not ignorant of how characteristic rumination itself was to the ox; and therefore he had previously commended its longer rumination, as that which preserves its strength unimpaired. We shall say, therefore, that rumination properly belongs to those which have teeth on only one side, and improperly to the hare, the rabbit, and mice; for which reason Dante Alighieri attributes it only to the bisulcate [cloven-hoofed] animals, when he sings thus in his Purgatorio:

Canto 16.

The laws exist: but who puts his hand to them?
No one; because the shepherd who goes before
Can ruminate, but has not cloven hooves.

The mode and way of rumination.

Since, therefore, such is the constitution and use of the stomachs and palate in proper ruminants, we must now consider the mode and way of rumination, by which surely the food is driven back from the first stomach into the mouth, and soon after is poured out again from the mouth. Pietro d'Abano, in the commentaries he published on Aristotle’s Problems, says that the inner tunic of the gullet in beasts of this kind is woven from a double kind of fibers, namely long and transverse: the former so that the fodder may be carried from the mouth to the stomach, the latter so that it may return from the same stomach to the mouth. But Galen asserts that individual instruments, while they act, draw to themselves with straight fibers, but expel with transverse ones; yet they retain with both at the same time. Accordingly, in providing a reason elsewhere,

14. On the Use of the Parts, 14. 3. On Natural Faculties.