Emily Dickinson Lexicon

RU-MI-NAN'TIA, n.

An order of herbivorous animals, having four stomachs, the first so situated as to receive a large quantity of vegetable matters coarsely bruised by a first mastication, which passes into the second, where it is moistened and formed into little pellets, which the animal has the power of bringing again to the mouth to be re-chewed, after which it is swallowed into the third stomach, from which it passes to the fourth, where it is finally digested. The camel, the deer, the bovine genus, the goat, and the sheep are examples of this order.