Aristotle THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

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128 pages - You are on Page 90

Of the viscera the liver in some animals becomes fatty, as, among fishes, is the case with the selachia, by the melting of whose livers an oil is manufactured. These cartilaginous fish themselves have no free fat at all in connexion with the flesh or with the stomach. The suet in fish is fatty, and does not solidify or congeal. All animals are furnished with fat, either intermingled with their flesh, or apart. Such as have no free or separate fat are less fat than others in stomach and omentum, as the eel; for it has only a scanty supply of suet about the omentum. Most animals take on fat in the belly, especially such animals as are little in motion.

The brains of animals supplied with fat are oily, as in the pig; of animals supplied with suet, parched and dry. But it is about the kidneys more than any other viscera that animals are inclined to take on fat; and the right kidney is always less supplied with fat than the left kidney, and, be the two kidneys ever so fat, there is always a space devoid of fat in between the two. Animals supplied with suet are specially apt to have it about the kidneys, and especially the sheep; for this animal is apt to die from its kidneys being entirely enveloped. Fat or suet about the kidney is superinduced by overfeeding, as is found at Leontini in Sicily; and consequently in this district they defer driving out sheep to pasture until the day is well on, with the view of limiting their food by curtailment of the hours of pasture.

Part 18

The part around the pupil of the eye is fatty in all animals, and this part resembles suet in all animals that possess such a part and that are not furnished with hard eyes.

Fat animals, whether male or female, are more or less unfitted for breeding purposes. Animals are disposed to take on fat more when old than when young, and especially when they have attained their full breadth and their full length and are beginning to grow depthways.

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