Ebook Dissertations Relative to the Natural History of Animals and Vegetables

In the course of my public demonstrations in the year 1777, I repeated in the presence of my hearers those celebrated experiments of the Academy of Cimento, which shew that the stomachs of fowls and ducks exert so astonishing a force as to reduce hollow globules of glass to powder in the space of a few hours. Finding them perfectly exact, I conceived the design of extending them to some other individuals of that class of birds which have been termed birds with muscular stomachs or gizzards. Such were the first lines of an undertaking, of which till that time I had never entertained the smallest idea, and which afterwards became more and more extensive, as my curiosity concerning so fine and useful a subject as the important function of Digestion increased.