Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books — Aristotle — John Shaqi
Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books
Aristotle · en
1. In all sanguineous animals, flesh, and that which is like flesh, is
between the skin and the bone, or what is analogous to bone: for the
same relation which a spine bears to a bone, is also borne by flesh to
that which is like flesh, in animals possessing bones and spines. The
flesh can be divided in every direction, and so is unlike sinews and
veins, which can only be divided in their length. The flesh disappears
in emaciated animals, giving place to veins and fibres. Those animals
which can obtain abundance of good food have fat instead of flesh.
2. Those that have much flesh have smaller veins and redder blood, and
their intestines and stomachs are small; but those which have large
veins and dark blood, and large intestines and great stomachs, have
also less flesh, for those that have fat flesh have small intestines.
CHAPTER XIII.
1. Adeps and fat differ from each other, for fat is always brittle, and
coagulates upon cooling, but adeps is liquid, and does not coagulate;
and broths made from animals with adeps do not thicken, as from the
horse and hog, but that made from animals with fat thickens, as from
the sheep and goat. These substances also differ in situation, for the
adeps is between the skin and the flesh; but the fat only exists upon
the extremity of the flesh. In adipose animals the omentum is adipose,
in fat animals it is fatty: for the animals with cutting teeth in both
jaws are adipose, those that have not cutting teeth in both jaws are
fat.
2. Of the viscera in some animals the liver is full of adeps, as in the
cartilaginous fishes, for oil is procured from these during the process
of decomposition, the cartilaginous fish are particularly free from
adeps on their flesh, but the adeps is separated on the stomach. The
fat also of fishes is adipose, and does not coagulate; and some animals
are furnished with adeps on the flesh, and others apart from the flesh;
and those creatures in which the adeps is not separated from the flesh
have less of this substance on the stomach and omentum, as the eel: for
these creatures have little fat on the omentum. In most animals the
adeps collects principally upon the abdomen, especially in those which
take little exercise.
3. The brain of adipose animals is unctuous, as in swine; that of fatty
animals is dry. Of all the viscera the kidneys are surrounded by the
greatest quantity of adeps in all animals; that on the right side is
always the least adipose; and let there be ever so much adeps, there is
always a space left between the kidneys. They are also the most fatty
of the viscera, and especially in sheep, for this animal sometimes
dies from the entire concealment of its kidneys in fat. This excessive
fat around the kidneys arises from good pasture, as in the Leontine
territory of Sicily; wherefore also in the evening they drive away the
sheep which have been feeding during the day, in order that they may
take less food.