Aristotle ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by W. Ogle.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

144 pages - You are on Page 88

Part 11

The viscera are enclosed each in a membrane. For they require some covering to protect them from injury, and require, moreover, that this covering shall be light. To such requirements membrane is well adapted; for it is close in texture so as to form a good protection, destitute of flesh so as neither to attract humour nor retain it, and thin so as to be light and not add to the weight of the body. Of the membranes those are the stoutest and strongest which invest the heart and the brain; as is but consistent with reason. For these are the parts which require most protection, seeing that they are the main governing powers of life, and that it is to governing powers that guard is due.

Part 12

Some animals have all the viscera that have been enumerated; others have only some of them. In what kind of animals this latter is the case, and what is the explanation, has already been stated. Moreover, the self-same viscera present differences in different possessors. For the heart is not precisely alike in all animals that have one; nor, in fact, is any viscus whatsoever. Thus the liver is in some animals split into several parts, while in others it is comparatively undivided. Such differences in its form present themselves even among those sanguineous animals that are viviparous, but are more marked in fishes and in the oviparous quadrupeds, and this whether we compare them with each other or with the Vivipara. As for birds, their liver very nearly resembles that of the Vivipara; for in them, as in these, it is of a pure and blood-like colour. The reason of this is that the body in both these classes of animals admits of the freest exhalation, so that the amount of foul residual matter within is but small. Hence it is that some of the Vivipara are without any gall-bladder at all. For the liver takes a large share in maintaining the purity of composition and the healthiness of the body. For these are conditions that depend finally and in the main upon the blood, and there is more blood in the liver than in any of the other viscera, the heart only excepted. On the other hand, the liver of oviparous quadrupeds and fishes inclines, as a rule, to a yellow hue, and there are even some of them in which it is entirely of this bad colour, in accordance with the bad composition of their bodies generally. Such, for instance, is the case in the toad, the tortoise, and other similar animals.

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