THE BILE. 103 



pregnancy. We shall see, indeed, that at the very time the func- 

 tions of the lungs suddenly begin at birth, the liver suddenly loses 

 much of its supply of blood. Warm-blooded animals with large 

 lungs, living in the air, have the liver proportionally smaller than 

 those which live partly in water : in cold-blooded animals, and 

 reptiles, which have lungs with such large cells as but slightly to 

 decarbonise the blood ; in fish, which get rid of carbon but slowly 

 by the gills ; and in the mollusca, which decarbonise still more 

 slowly by gills or lungs, the liver is proportionally large. 

 More blood flows to the liver, accordingly as the lungs are less 

 active organs. In the mammalia and birds it receives the blood 

 of only the stomach, intestines, spleen, and pancreas ; but in the 

 cold-blooded, of many other parts ; in the tortoise, of the hind 

 legs, pelvis, tail, and vena azygos ; in serpents, of the right renal, 

 and all the intercostal veins ; in fish, of the renal veins, the tail, 

 and genitals. They assert, that in pneumonia and phthisis more 

 bile is secreted, and in the blue disease, and other affections of the 

 heart, that the liver is enlarged. The constituents of the bile 

 contain a large quantity of carbon, which is chiefly in union 

 with hydrogen, and under the form of resin or fatty matter, and 

 resin is most abundant in the bile of herbivorous animals, whose 

 food contains a very large proportion of carbon and hydrogen. 

 In the lungs the carbon may be said to be burnt, whence animal 

 heat ; in the abdomen it passes off still combustible. 



