time in taking in vegetable matter, consisting chiefly of more or less complex combustible and unstable organic compounds. It is a pure vegetarian, and a remarkably moderate drinker. Some but only a small proportion, of the vegetable matter it eats, leaves its body comparatively unchanged, in little pellets, the faeces, in the process of defaecation. For the rest we have to account.
Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata · The Wunder Library — complete classics, free to read, with narration.