REARING AND FEEDING OP ANIMALS. 



317 



proportions. Their various parts, connected by flexible ligaments, are capa- 

 ble of all the varieties of motion fitted to the condition of the animal. 



Motion is given to the bones by means of muscles or fleshy fibre: but the 

 flesh of animals is not a mere stratum covering the bones, as some might sup- 

 pose. Every muscle is a distinct organ, consisting of innumerable parallel 

 fibres, forming, as it were, a fleshy band, stretching from bone to bone, or from 

 muscle to muscle, and each serving its peculiar function. 



These muscles are of vast power when under the influence of the vital prin- 

 ciple. By contracting, they give motion to the bones and other parts. Each 

 muscle consists of long threads or fibres, seemingly bound together by mesh- 

 work. These fibres, in so far as the eye, assisted by very powerful glasses, can 

 discover, are resolvable into minuter filaments. A number of these filaments 

 may be said to form a fibre; a number of these fibres to form a fasciculus or 

 bundle of fibres; and a number of fasciculi to form a muscle. 



Muscles assume a variety of form suited 

 to their peculiar functions. Sometimes they 

 are flat, extending over a considerable 

 space, and often they form a fleshy band, 

 swelling out in the centre, and becoming 

 small and tendinous at the points of their 

 attachment to the bones. 



Not only is a class of muscles employed 

 in giving motion to the bones, but a nu- 

 merous class is employed within the body 

 in giving motion to the organs of nutrition, 

 as the heart and the stomach. Anatomists enumerate in all about 400 muscles, 

 a number wonderfully small when we consider their functions, and the infinite 

 variety of motion in the animalj for, from the motions of the limbs to the ex- 

 pression of the face and modulation of the voice, all is moved by this machinery 

 of surpassing beauty and simplicity. 



The bones, although harder than the muscular structure, are, like it, the parts 

 of a living machine, furnished with their bloodves5els and nerves. They give 

 to the animal its peculiar form, and, acted upon by the muscles, its power of 

 progression. 



The following figure represents the connection of the principal bones of the 

 horse: 





