Page - 993 - in The Complete Aristotle

As for the properties of the internal organs, these we must first discuss in the case of the animals that are supplied with blood. For the principal genera differ from the rest of animals, in that the former are supplied with blood and the latter are not; and the former include man, viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, birds, fishes, cetaceans, and all the others that come under no general designation by reason of their not forming genera, but groups of which simply the specific name is predicable, as when we say ‘the serpent,’ the ‘crocodile’. All viviparous quadrupeds, then, are furnished with an oesophagus and a windpipe, situated as in man; the same statement is applicable to oviparous quadrupeds and to birds, only that the latter present diversities in the shapes of these organs. As a general rule, all animals that take up air and breathe it in and out are furnished with a lung, a windpipe, and an oesophagus, with the windpipe and oesophagus not admitting of diversity in situation but admitting of diversity in properties, and with the lung admitting of diversity in both these respects. Further, all blooded animals have a heart and a diaphragm or midriff; but in small animals the existence of the latter organ is not so obvious owing to its delicacy and minute size. In regard to the heart there is an exceptional phenomenon observable in oxen. In other words, there is one species of ox where, though not in all cases, a bone is found inside the heart. And, by the way, the horse’s heart also has a bone inside it. The genera referred to above are not in all cases furnished with a lung: for instance, the fish is devoid of the organ, as is also every animal furnished with gills. All blooded animals are furnished with a liver. As a general rule blooded animals are furnished with a spleen; but with the great majority of non- viviparous but oviparous animals the spleen is so small as all but to escape observation; and this is the case with almost all birds, as with the pigeon, the kite, the falcon, the owl: in point of fact, the aegocephalus is devoid of the organ altogether. With oviparous quadrupeds the case is much the same as with the viviparous; that is to say, they also have the spleen exceedingly minute, as the tortoise, the freshwater tortoise, the toad, the lizard, the crocodile, and the frog. Some animals have a gall-bladder close to the liver, and others have not. Of viviparous quadrupeds the deer is without the organ, as also the roe, the horse, the mule, the ass, the seal, and some kinds of pigs. Of deer those that are called Achainae appear to have gall in their tail, but what is so called does resemble gall in colour, though it is not so completely fluid, and the organ internally resembles a spleen. However, without any exception, stags are found to have maggots living 993