The horse eats slowly, but almost continually, the _ox_ on the contrary, eats quick, and takes in a short time all the food which he requires; after which he lies down to ruminate. This difference arises from the different conformation of their stomachs. The _ox_, whose two first stomachs form but one vast bag, can, without inconvenience, receive a large quantity of grass, which afterwards, by chewing, digests at leisure. But the horse, whose stomach is single and small, can receive but a small quantity of grass, he therefore fills it in proportion as it digests, and passes into the intestines, where is performed the principal decomposition of the food. Having observed in the _ox_ and the horse the successive product of digestion, but, above all, the decomposition of hay, I remarked in the ox, that at the entrance of that part of the paunch which forms the second stomach, it is reduced to a kind of green paste; that in this form it is retained in the plaits of the third stomach; that the decomposition is entire in the fourth stomach; and that scarcely any thing but the dregs passes into the intestines. In the horse on the contrary, the food is not decomposed at all, either in the stomach or in the first intestines, where it only becomes more flexible and supple, macerated with the liquor with which it is surrounded, it arrives at the cæcum and colon, without much alteration; it is principally in these two intestines, of which the enormous capacity answers to that of the paunch of ruminant cattle, that in the horse is performed the decomposition of the food; but this decomposition is never so entire as that which is made in the fourth stomach of the ox.