than those of man; this intermediate length of the human intestine is ordinarily looked upon as indicating that man is adapted to a mixed diet, being neither strictly a flesh-eating nor strictly a vegetable-eating animal. During the slow passage of the food mass through the small intestine the processes of digestion and absorption are completed, so that very little material enters the large intestine except the indigestible parts of the original food. These are made up mostly of cellulose and similar indigestible vegetable materials, but they include also indigestible fragments of gristle and other meat remnants. It is also worthy of note that the amount of water does not decrease much during the passage of material through the small intestine; in other words the material that enters the large intestine is about as liquid as that which passes from the stomach in to the small intestine. This does not mean that there is no absorption of water from the small intestine; in fact, water that we drink is probably absorbed quite rapidly; what it does mean is that enough water is secreted into the intestine from the blood in the lower parts to keep the whole mass liquid; this is of course important as an aid both to digestion and absorption. The large intestine, as its name implies, is a tube of much larger diameter than the small; it begins low down on the right-hand side, passes up to about the level of the stomach, then across the body and down on the left-hand side, making thus a sort of inverted “U” in the abdomen; the space within the “U” is filled up by the loops and coils of the small intestine. The first part of the large intestine is devoted to the absorption of water; the result of this absorption is to leave the contents of the large intestine in a semidry condition; absorption of water goes on continuously, so that the longer the material remains in the large bowel, the drier will it become. In the ordinary course of events the material, as it is dried out, is passed along through the large intestine and at intervals, which should not exceed twenty-four hours, the accumulated material is discharged from the body.