4 RESPIRATORY MECHANISMS 



conditions of almost complete rest, constant temperature and 

 so on, Rubner (1883) found that the metabolism was not 

 simply proportional to the weight, but very nearly to W 213 , 

 the square of the cube root of the weight, which represents 



Table 2 

 Respiratory exchange of warm-blooded animals 



Table 3 



Average respiratory exchange of groups of forest-soil 



animals at 13°c. 



more or less closely the external surface. This comparison 

 can be extended without encountering serious discrepancies 

 to a considerable number of warm-blooded animals, as shown 

 in Table 2, and for a long time it was thought that it expressed 

 the conditions for heat loss which in a warm-blooded animal 

 must be definitely related to the metabolism during rest. 



