Aristotle ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by W. Ogle.

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144 pages - You are on Page 141

In the Torpedo and the Fishing-frog the breadth of the anterior part of the body is not so great as to render locomotion by fins impossible, but in consequence of it the upper pair (pectorals) are placed further back and the under pair (ventrals) are placed close to the head, while to compensate for this advancement they are reduced in size so as to be smaller than the upper ones. In the Torpedo the two upper fins (pectorals) are placed on the tail, and the fish uses the broad expansion of its body to supply their place, each lateral half of its circumference serving the office of a fin.

The head, with its several parts, as also the organs of sense, have already come under consideration.

There is one peculiarity which distinguishes fishes from all other sanguineous animals, namely, the possession of gills. Why they have these organs has been set forth in the treatise on Respiration. These gills are in most fishes covered by opercula, but in the Selachia, owing to the skeleton being cartilaginous, there are no such coverings. For an operculum requires fish-spine for its formation, and in other fishes the skeleton is made of this substance, whereas in the Selachia it is invariably formed of cartilage. Again, while the motions of spinous fishes are rapid, those of the Selachia are sluggish, inasmuch as they have neither fish-spine nor sinew; but an operculum requires rapidity of motion, seeing that the office of the gills is to minister as it were to expiration. For this reason in Selachia the branchial orifices themselves effect their own closure, and thus there is no need for an operculum to ensure its taking place with due rapidity. In some fishes the gills are numerous, in others few in number; in some again they are double, in others single. The last gill in most cases is single. For a detailed account of all this, reference must be made to the treatises on Anatomy, and to the book of Researches concerning Animals.

It is the abundance or the deficiency of the cardiac heat which determines the numerical abundance or deficiency of the gills. For, the greater an animal's heat, the more rapid and the more forcible does it require the branchial movement to be; and numerous and double gills act with more force and rapidity than such as are few and single. Thus, too, it is that some fishes that have but few gills, and those of comparatively small efficacy, can live out of water for a considerable time; for in them there is no great demand for refrigeration. Such, for example, are the eel and all other fishes of serpent-like form.

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