Cuvierian System of Zoology. 311 



Its various functions vigorously are plied 



By strong machinery ; and in solid health 



The man confirmed long triumphs o'er disease. 



But the full ocean ebbs ; there is a point 



By nature fixed, whence life must downwards tend ; 



For still the beating tide consolidates 



The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still 



To the weak throbs of the ill supported heart. 



This languishing, these strengthening by degrees. 



To hard, unyielding, unelastic bone. 



Through tedious channels the congealing flood 



Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on ; 



It loiters still, and now it stirs no more. 



This is the period few attain, the death ^ 



Of nature. Thus (so Heaven ordained it) life 



Destroys itself; and could these laws have changed, 



Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate, 



And Homer live immortal as his song." 



Art of Preserving Health, book ii. 



To return to our author, all living bodies, he observes, 

 require to have solid parts to preserve the form, and fluid 

 parts to keep up the internal motion. Their texture {tissu) 

 is therefore composed of network (reseauoc) and of plates 

 {mailles\ or of fibres and solid laminae {lames solides), which 

 enclose liquids in their interstices. It is in the liquids that the 

 vital motion is the most constant and extended. Foreign sub- 

 stances penetrate the intimate structure of the body, by incor- 

 porating with the liquids. It is the latter which nourish the 

 solids, by interposing their molecules among them ; it is the 

 liquids which also detach the superfluous molecules from the 

 solids ; it is under a liquid or gaseous form that the matter, 

 which requires to be exhaled, traverses the pores of the living 

 body ; but it is the solids that contain the liquids, and which, 

 by their contractions, communicate to them a part of their 

 motion. 



This mutual action of the solids and fluids, this passage of 

 the molecules from one to the other, made a great similarity 

 of chemical composition necessary for both ; and, accordingly, 

 we find that the solids of organised bodies, both vegetable and 

 animal, are, in a great part, composed of elements susceptible 

 of taking easily a gaseous or liquid form. The motion of the 

 liquids requiring a continually repeated action of the solids, it 

 was necessary that the solids should possess flexibility and 

 dilation, and this is a nearly general character of organised 

 solids. 



This structure, which is common to all living beings, this 

 porous texture [tissu areolaire), of which the fibres or laminae 

 are more or less flexible, and enclose liquids in greater or less 

 abundance, is what is called organisation. No unorganised 



Y 4 



