The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
elephant, and the comical shovels of the mole and ornithorhynchus,
notwithstanding the great differences in their external appearance
and use, contain essentially the same bones and the same arrangement
of the bones as do the arms of men and women. The human body has two
primary cavities in it. So have the bodies of all vertebrates: a
neural cavity containing the brain and spinal cord, and a visceral
cavity containing the heart, liver, lungs, and alimentary canal.
Invertebrates have only one body cavity—the one corresponding to
the visceral cavity of vertebrates—and the main nerve trunk,
instead of extending along the back, as among vertebrates, is in
invertebrates located ventrally. Vertebrates are the only animals on
the earth that have a highly developed circulatory system, a system
entirely shut off from the other systems, and containing a heart,
arteries, veins, and capillaries. In all invertebrates the digestive
and circulatory systems remain to a greater or less extent
connected, the blood and food mingling more or less in the general
cavity of the body. Worms and insects have pulsating tubes instead
of heart and arteries. Crustaceans have hearts with one chamber, and
mollusks have two or three chambered hearts, but the blood, instead
of returning to the heart after its journey through the arteries,
passes into the body cavity. In man and other vertebrates the
circulating current is confined strictly to the bloodvessels, no
particle of it ever escaping into the general body cavity. The heart
of vertebrates is distinguished from that of invertebrates by being
located ventrally. The heart of invertebrates is in the back. The
blood of vertebrates differs from that of invertebrates in
containing both red and white corpuscles. Invertebrates have white
corpuscles only. Worms have yellow, red, or bright green blood. The
blood of crustaceans is bluish, that of mollusks is white, and that
of insects dusky or brown. The blood of all vertebrates, excepting
amphioxus, is red. All backboned beings, whether they dwell in seas
or cities, and whether they build nests or empires, have two eyes,
two ears, nose and mouth, all located in the head, and always
occupying the same relative position to each other. Invertebrates
may have their brains in their abdomen, as do the mites; hear with
their legs or antennae, as many insects do; see with their tunics,
like the scallops; and breathe with their skin, as do the worms. The
crayfish hears with its ‘feelers,’ the cricket and katydid with
their fore-legs, the grasshopper with its abdomen, the clam with its
‘foot,’ and mysis and other low crustaceans have their auditory
organs on their tails.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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