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Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.
128 pages - You are on Page 93
Part 20
We now proceed to discuss the properties of marrow; for this is one of the liquids found in certain sanguineous animals. All the natural liquids of the body are contained in vessels: as blood in veins, marrow in bones other moistures in membranous structures of the skin
In young animals the marrow is exceedingly sanguineous, but, as animals grow old, it becomes fatty in animals supplied with fat, and suet-like in animals with suet. All bones, however, are not supplied with marrow, but only the hollow ones, and not all of these. For of the bones in the lion some contain no marrow at all, and some are only scantily supplied therewith; and that accounts, as was previously observed, for the statement made by certain writers that the lion is marrowless. In the bones of pigs it is found in small quantities; and in the bones of certain animals of this species it is not found at all.
These liquids, then, are nearly always congenital in animals, but milk and sperm come at a later time. Of these latter, that which, whensoever it is present, is secreted in all cases ready-made, is the milk; sperm, on the other hand, is not secreted out in all cases, but in some only, as in the case of what are designated thori in fishes.
Whatever animals have milk, have it in their breasts. All animals have breasts that are internally and externally viviparous, as for instance all animals that have hair, as man and the horse; and the cetaceans, as the dolphin, the porpoise, and the whale-for these animals have breasts and are supplied with milk. Animals that are oviparous or only externally viviparous have neither breasts nor milk, as the fish and the bird.
Aristotle Complete Works
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