imal bodies much to be admired. Of ten thousand eyes, 1 do not know that it would be possible to match one, except with its own fellow; or to distribute them into suitable pairs by any other selection than that which obtains. This regularity of the animal structure is rendered more remarkable by the three following considerations:-First, the limbs, separately taken, have not this correlation of parts; but the contrary of it. A knife drawn down the chine, cuts the human body into two parts, externally equal and alike; you cannot draw a straight line which will divide a hand, a foot, the leg, the thigh, the cheek, the eye, the ear, into two parts equal and alike. Those parts which are placed upon the middle or partition line of the body, or which traverse that line, as the nose, the tongue, the lips, may be so divided, or, more properly speaking, are double organs; but other parts cannot. This shows that the correspondency which we have been describing, does not arise by any necessity in the nature of the subject: for, if necessary, it would be universal; whereas it is observed only in the system or assemblage: it is not true of the separate parts; that is to say, it is found where it conduces to beauty or utility; it is not found where it would subsist at the expense of both. The two wings of a bird always correspond: the two sides of a feather frequently do not. In centipedes, millepedes, and that whole tribe of insects, no two legs on the same side are alike; yet there is the most exact parity between the legs opposite to one another. 2. The next circumstance to be remarked is, that whilst the cavities of the body are so configurated, as externally to exhibit the most exact correspondency of the opposite. sides, the contents of these cavities have no such correspondency. A line drawn down the middle of the breast, divides the thorax into two sides exactly similar; yet these two sides enclose very different contents. The heart lies on the left side; a lobe of the lungs on the right; balancing each other neither in size nor shape. The same thing holds of the abdomen. The liver lies on the right side,* without any similar viscus opposed to it on the left. The spleen indeed is situated over against the liver; but agreeing with the liver neither in bulk nor form. There is no equipollency between these. The stomach is a vessel, both irregular in its shape, and oblique in its position. The foldings and doublings of the intestines do not present a parity * The principal lobe of the liver is on the right, but a smaller is extended into the left side. See PLATE XXII. of sides. Yet that symmetry which depends upon the correlation of the sides, is externally preserved throughout the whole trunk; and is the more remarkable in the lower parts of it, as the integuments are soft; and the shape, consequently, is not, as the thorax is by its ribs, reduced by natural stays. It is evident, therefore, that the external proportion does not arise from any equality in the shape or pressure of the internal contents. What is it indeed but a correction of inequalities? an adjustment, by mutual compensation, of anomalous forms into a regular congeries? the ef fect, in a word, of artful, and, if we might be permitted so to speak, of studied collocation? 3. Similar also to this, is the third observation; that an internal inequality in the feeding vessels is so managed, as to produce no inequality in parts which were intended to correspond. The right arm answers accurately to the left, both in size and shape; but the arterial branches, which supply the two arms, do not go off from their trunk, in a pair, in the same manner, at the same place, or at the same angle. Under which want of similitude, it is very difficult to conceive how the same quantity of bloo should be pushed through each artery: yet the result i right; the two limbs, which are nourished by them, per ceive no difference of supply, no effects of excess or deficiency. Concerning the difference of manner, in which the subclavian and carotid arteries, upon the different sides of the body, separate themselves from the aorta, Cheselden seems to have thought, that the advantage which the left gain by going off at a much more acute angle than the right, is made up to the right by their going off together in one branch.* It is very possible that this may be the compensating contrivance; and if it be so, how curious, how hydrostatical? II. Another perfection of the animal mass is package. [PI. XXII. fig. 1.] I know nothing which is so surprising Examine the contents of the trunk of any large animal Take notice how soft, how tender, how intricate they are; how constantly in action, how necessary to life! Reflect upon the danger of any injury to their substance, any derangement of their position, any obstruction to their office. Observe the heart pumping at the centre, at the rate of eighty strokes in a minute: one set of pipes carrying the stream away from it, another set bringing, in its course, the * Ches. Anat. p. 184. ed 7. fluid back to it again; the lungs performing their elaborate office, viz. distending and contracting their many thousand vesicles, by a reciprocation which cannot cease for a minute; the stomach exercising its powerful chemistry; the bowels silently propelling the changed aliment; collecting from it, as it proceeds, and transmitting to the blood an incessant supply of prepared and assimilated nourishment; that blood pursuing its course; the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas, the parotid, with many other known and distinguishable glands, drawing off from it, all the while, their proper secretions. These several operations, together with others more subtile but less capable of being investigated, are going on within us, at one and the same time. Think of this; and then observe how the body itself, the case which holds this machinery, is rolled, and jolted, and tossed about, the mechanism remaining unhurt, and with very little molestation, even of its nicest motions. Observe a rope dancer, a tumbler, or a monkey: the sudden inversions and contortions which the internal parts sustain by the postures into which their bodies are thrown; or rather observe the shocks which these parts, even in ordinary subjects, sometimes receive from falls and bruises, or by abrupt jerks and twists, without sensible, or with soon-recovered damage. Observe this, and then reflect how firmly every part must be secured, how carefully surrounded, how well tied down and packed together. This property of animal bodies has never, I think, been considered under a distinct head, or so fully as it deserves. I may be allowed, therefore, in order to verify my observation concerning it, to set forth a short anatomical detail, though it oblige me to use more technical language than I should wish to introduce into a work of this kind. 1. The heart (such care is taken of the centre of life) is placed between the soft lobes of the lungs; tied to the mediastinum and to the pericardium; which pericardium is not only itself an exceedingly strong membrane, but adheres firmly to the duplicature of the mediastinum, and, by its point, to the middle tendon of the diaphragm. The heart is also sustained in its place by the great blood-vessels which issue from it * 2. The lungs are lied to the sternum by the mediastinum, before; to the vertebræ by the pleura, behind. It seems indeed to be the very use of the mediastinum (which is a membrane that goes straight through the middle of the *Keill's Anat. p. 107. ed. ø. thorax, from the breast to the back) to keep the contents of the thorax in their places; in particular to hinder one lobe of the lungs from incommoding another, or the parts of the lungs from pressing upon each other when we lie on one side.* 3. The liver is fastened in the body by two ligaments; the first, which is large and strong, comes from the covering of the diaphragm, and penetrates the substance of the liver; the second is the umbilical vein, which, after birth, degenerates into a ligament. The first, which is the principal, fixes the liver in its situation, whilst the body holds an erect posture; the second prevents it from pressing upon the diaphragm when we lie down; and both together sling or suspend the liver when we lie upon our backs, so that it may not compress or obstruct the ascending vena cava, to which belongs the important office of returning the blood from the body to the heart. 4. The bladder is tied to the naval by the urachus, transformed into a ligament: thus, what was a passage for the urine to the fœtus, becomes, after birth, a support or stay to the bladder. The peritoneum also keeps the viscera from confounding themselves with, or pressing irregularly upon, the bladder: for the kidneys and bladder are contained in a distinct duplicature of that membrane, being thereby partitioned off from the other contents of the abdomen. 5. The kidneys are lodged in a bed of fat. 6. The pancreas, or sweetbread, is strongly tied to the peritoneum, which is the great wrapping sheet, that encloses all the bowels contained in the lower belly. 7. The spleen also is confined to its place by an adhesion to the peritoneum and diaphragm, and by a connexion with the omentum.§ It is possible, in my opinion, that the spleen may be merely a stuffing, a soft cushion to fill up a vacancy or hollow, which, unless occupied, would leave the package loose and unsteady: for, supposing that it answers no other purpose than this, it must be vascular, and admit of a circulation through it, in order to be kept alive, or be a part of a living body. 8. The omentum, epiplöon, or caul, is an apron ucked up, or doubling upon itself, at its lowest part. The upper edge is tied to the bottom of the stomach, to the spleen, as hath already been observed, and to part of the duodeThe reflected edge also, after forming the doubling, num. *Keill's Anat. p. 119. ed. 3. + Ches. Anat. p. 162. § Ches. Anat. p. 167. * K comes up behind the front flap, and is tied to the colon ana adjoining viscera.* 9. The septa of the brain probably prevent one part of that organ from pressing with too great a weight upon another part. The processes of the dura mater divide the cavity of the skull, like so many inner partition walls, and thereby confine each hemisphere and lobe of the brain to the chamber which is assigned to it, without its being liable to rest upon, or incommode the neighbouring parts. The great art and caution of packing is to prevent one thing hurting another. This, in the head, the chest, and the abdomen, of an animal body, is, amongst other methods, provided for by membranous partitions and wrappings, which keep the parts separate. The above may serve as a short account of the manner in which the principal viscera are sustained in their places. But of the provisions for this purpose, by far, in my opinion, the most curious, and where also such a provision was most wanted, is in the guts. It is pretty evident, that a long narrow tube (in man, about five times the length of the body) laid from side to side in folds upon one another, winding in oblique and circuitous directions, composed also of a soft and yielding substance, must, without some exraordinary precaution for its safety, be continually displaced by the various, sudden, and abrupt motions of the body which contains it. I should expect that, if not bruised or wounded by every fall, or leap, or twist, it would be entangled, or be involved with itself, or, at the least, slipped and shaken out of the order in which it is disposed, and which order is necessary to be preserved for the carrying on of the important functions, which it has to execute in the animal economy. Let us see, therefore, how a danger so serious, and yet so natural to the length, narrowness, and tubular form of the part, is provided against. The expedient is admirable, and it is this; the intestinal canal, throughout its whole progress, is knit to the edge of a broad fat membrane called the mesentery. [Pl. XXII. fig. 2.] It forms the margin of this mesentery, being stitched and fastened to it like the edging of a ruffle: being four times as long as the mesentery itself, it is what a sempstress would call, "puckered or gathered on" to it. This is the nature of the connexion of the gut with the mesentery; and being thus joined to, or rather made a part of the mesentery, it is folded and wrapped up together with it. Now the mesentery, having a considerable dimension in breadth, being in * Ches. Anat. p. 149. |