1971. The artery contains the whole body, lung and intestine, in short,
the whole animal, (whereas it was previously dispersed in two vessels,)
in a fluid state within itself. From the artery therefore nutrition
will directly take place; from it the animal will be formed.
1972. The air or respiratory vessels may be viewed as arteries carried
to the very extreme. In the lung the arterial system has attained its
highest purity, the oxygen only, without the indifferent substance,
being contained therein. The trachea is the roughest artery--Arteria
aspera.
1973. The arterial system, in accordance with its signification, makes
its first appearance in water, because the aquatic mode of respiration
is less energetic, and thus the mucus is more feebly decomposed. The
Mollusca, snails, and many worms have a perfect arterial system. The
branchiæ do not, like respiratory tubes, pass into the body, as in
insects; but there are vessels which take up the oxygen and convey it
into the body.
1974. As lung and absorbent belong to the pure air or the pure water,
so do artery and vein to the water combined with the air. The two
former are therefore present only where aerial respiration occurs, and
the two latter where water merely is respired.
1975. The last system is only present in animals, in so far as they are
aquatic in their habits.
1976. Insects, as being purely aerial animals, have therefore arteries
and veins only so long as they are in the larva or worm-like condition,
and as flies or perfect insects may continue to live without them. On
the contrary, the purely aquatic animals appear enabled to live without
true respiratory and absorbent vessels. It in fact appears, that
lymphatic as well as respiratory vessels are wanting in the molluscs,
snails, and worms, since the water directly bathes or washes the
arteries.
1977. Animals with both systems of vessels, the unclosed and closed,
must be more perfect in structure, and must at once combine worm and
insect in themselves. They are insects from having absorbent and
respiratory vessels, but worms as having arteries and veins.
b. _Veins._
1978. The veins are developed as mucus-vessels at the intestinal
extremities of the arteries, which absorb the arterial mucus (blood),
after it has deposited its air on the tegumentary substance, just as
the lymphatic vessels absorb their fluid from the intestine or any
other part of the body.
1979. As the artery is a respiratory vessel that has become
self-substantial, so is the vein a similarly conditioned, and
dismembered lymphatic vessel. In the one it is the lung, in the other
the intestine, that has become the free vascular system. But in the
proper vascular system both lung and intestine are repeated, the former
as artery, the latter as vein.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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