previous next

CHAP. 91.—ANIMALS WHICH ARE WITHOUT BLOOD AT CERTAIN PERIODS OF THE YEAR.

Those animals which conceal themselves1 at certain periods of the year, as already mentioned, have no blood at those times, with the exception, indeed, of some very small drops about the heart. A marvellous dispensation of Nature! and very similar to that witnessed in man, where the blood is sensible of various modifications from the slightest causes; for not only, similarly to the bile, does it rush upwards to the face, but it serves also to indicate the various tendencies of the mind, by depicting shame, anger, and fear, in many ways, either by the paleness of the features or their unusual redness; as, in fact, the redness of anger and the blush of modesty are quite different things. It is a well-known fact, that when a man is in fear, the blood takes to flight and disappears, and that many persons have been pierced through the body without losing one drop of blood; a thing, however, which is only the case with man. But as to those animals which we have already mentioned as changing2 colour, they derive that colour from the reflection3 of other objects; while, on the other hand, man is the only one that has the elements which cause these changes centred in himself. All diseases, as well as death, tend to absorb the blood.

1 Bears, dormice, serpents, &c.

2 The polypus and the chameleon.

3 See B. viii. cc. 51, 52.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: