THE MUSCLES. 107 



very minute post-mortem examination, St. Bel came to the conclu- 

 sion that his death was owing to disease of the kidneys, combined 

 with "violent inflammation of the bowels;" and found that his 

 heart weighed fourteen pounds*. 



LECTURE IX. 



ACTION. 



Properly speaking, the phrase locomotion denotes the faculty 

 an animal possesses of transporting his body or moving himself 

 from place to place; the term action expressing his mode or 

 manner of doing this. No horse, in his healthy or normal state, is 

 without the power of locomotion ; though there are only certain 

 horses that, in the estimation of the connoisseur, possess action. 

 Action, however, is not infrequently used in a generic sense, being 

 then synonymous with locomotion ; the kind of action being ex- 

 pressed by such epithets as good, bad, high, low, round, darting, 

 &c, and this is the sense in which I purpose employing it on the 

 present occasion. 



For the performance of action or locomotion, two sets of struc- 

 tures are needful : one, which is passive, the bones, I have already 

 had under consideration ; the other, the active power, the muscles, 

 I shall now consider. 



THE MUSCLES. 



The flesh investing the osseous fabric of an animal body proves, 

 on dissection, divisible into numerous distinct pieces or portions, 

 various in shape and magnitude, and so disposed that, through a 

 power every portion, independently, possesses of contracting or 

 shortening its length, the bones by them are flexed or extended one 

 on the other, according as is required for the purposes of action or 

 locomotion. That inimitable piece of mechanism, the skeleton, is, 

 as we have already seen, so constructed as to admit of the bones, 



* Notwithstanding this — as it appears it must have — including the blood 

 the heart contained, still the weight must be regarded as enormous. 



