accompaniment of the feast of reason and the flow of soul; the slowness and imperfection with which the stomach works when the mind is harassed with care struggling against adverse events; or is in sorrow and without hope; when the friend that sat by our side, and with whom we were wont to take sweet counsel, is gone, and therefore gone that which made it life to live. 624. Renovation is the primary and essential office of the stomach, and its organic nerves enable it to supply the ever-recurring wants of the system. Gratification of appetite is a secondary and subordinate office of the stomach, and its sentient nerves enable it to produce the state of pleasurable consciousness when its organic function is duly performed. By the double office thus assigned it, the stomach is rendered what Mr. Hunter named it, the centre of sympathies. 625. From the whole length of the great arch of the stomach, and partly also from the commencement of the duodenum (fig. CLXX.), the peritoneal coat of the stomach is produced, forming a thin, delicate membranous bag, called the omentum, or cawl (fig. CLXX. 7). The omentum extends from the great arch of the stomach to below the umbilicus, and completely covers a large portion of the anterior surface of the abdominal viscera (fig. CLXX. 7). Between the two fine membranous layers of which it is composed is contained a quantity of fat, of which substance it serves as a reservoir, and by the transudation of which it appears to lubricate the intestines, and to assist in preventing their accretion. 626. The food, on reaching the stomach, does not occupy indifferently any portion of it, but is arranged in a peculiar manner always in one and the same part. If the stomach be observed in a living animal, or be inspected soon after death, it is seen that about a third of its length towards the pylorus is divided from the rest by the contraction of the circular fibre called the hour-glass contraction (fig. CLXX. 6). The stomach is thus divided into a cardiac and a pyloric portion (fig. CLXX. 6). The food, when first received by the stomach, is always deposited in the cardiac portion, and is there arranged in a definite manner. The food first taken is placed outermost, that is, nearest the surface of the stomach; the portion next taken is placed interior to the first, and so on in succession, until the food last taken occupies the centre of the mass. When new food is received before the old is completely digested, the two kinds are kept distinct, the new being always found in the centre of the old.