SECTION IV: TRANSPORT 



CHAPTER XXII 



THE BLOOD 



INLAND TRANSPORT SERVICE 



" If they flourish not. a kingdom may have good limmes, but will have empty 

 veines and nourish little." Bacon. 



We have seen reason to consider the animal body as a country 

 containing numerous cell-communities, each busily engaged on its 

 specific staple industry and connected with one another and with 

 the seat of government by an extremely efficient means of com- 

 munication — the nervous system. Such a country, on account 

 of its complex nature, must have a system of transport. Raw 

 materials from outside must be brought in, and some means must 

 exist for sorting out the imports and forwarding the suitable ones 

 to the appropriate cell-communities, etc. It is convenient to 

 carry still further this simile of a country. 



It is obvious that some imports may arrive from overseas 

 ready for use and have only to be handed to the distributors for 

 repacking and transmission to the consumer. Others have to 

 undergo some change before they can be transported inland. That 

 is, there are tzvo classes of raiv material arriving at the same port, 

 viz. : gas and liquid-solid food. By a mechanism which will be 

 considered in a subsequent chapter, the gas is diverted to one 

 basin of the harbour, while the food material is passed to a canal — 

 the alimentary canal. The gas is sent directly to the inland 

 transport service, while the food material is sent to a series of 

 factories where it undergoes partial manufacture and is repacked 

 in smaller containers, before being handed to the same inland 

 transport service. Just so, iron ore may be shipped to the Clyde, 

 from which it passes through a series of factories, in which it is 

 partially purified, smelted, etc., and then sent as pig-iron, say to 

 Sheffield, for final treatment, before being distributed in a useful 

 form over the country. There are, therefore, two forms of transport, 

 which we may term external and internal. As all material has 

 finally to be carried by the inland transport service and as the 



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