The faculties of birds / [Anon].

  • Rennie, James, 1787-1867
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The faculties of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    145/392 (page 119)
    and aptly describes it as an organ “ wherein the meat, as in a mill, is ground to pieces, and then pressed by degrees into the guts in the form of a pulp ; for which purpose the deductor serves to deliver the meat from the echinus to the laboratory, as a hopper to a mill; the four grinders, or chief operators, are the millstones Agreeably to these views, it has been recorded that Felix Plater found an onyx, a precious stone of peculiar hardness, which had been swallowed by a hen, diminished no less than one-fourth of its bulk in four days ; and a French gold piece of money lost in the same way sixteen grains of its weightf. Reaumur and Spallanzani, again, found that when tin tubes full of grain were introduced into the sto¬ machs of turkeys, and allowed to continue there a considerable time, they were broken, crushed, or distorted in a most singular manner. “ I have seen,” says Spallanzani, “ instances without number of such contusions, one of which I cannot forbear here relat¬ ing'. Having found that the tin tubes which I used for common fowls were incapable of resisting the stomach of turkeys,, and not happening at that time to be provided with any tin plate of greater thickness, I tried to strengthen them by soldering to the ends two circular plates of the same metal, perforated only with a few holes for the admission of the gastric fluid. But this contrivance was ineffectual ; for after the tubes had been twenty hours in the stomach or a turkey, the circular plates were driven in, and some of the tubes were broken, some compressed, and some distorted in the most irregular manner. “ I then tried the following means of preventing this inconvenience. Having perforated the circular plates in the centres, I passed a wire through the * Comp. Anat. of the Stomach, ix. 40-1. f Swammerdam, Biblia Naturae^ p. 168. M 3