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They never tied up the mouths of the millions of air-vessels in the lungs, and then taxed them to the full measure of action and respiration. Even Pharaoh only demanded bricks without straw for a short time; but the fashionable lady asks to live without breathing for many years! "The ancient Stoics taught that the nearest approach to apathy was the perfection of their doctrine.
More than that, it appears that balloons are unmanageable, and it is to air-vessels, constructed more nearly upon the model of birds, that we must go to find out the secret of aerial navigation. At present, as in former times, we are at the mercy of balloons globes lighter than the air, and therefore the sport and the prey of tempests and currents.
I propose that after this outbreak is over we shall order the construction of ten thousand more of these air-vessels, and this will furnish us an excuse for sending a large force of apprentices to the present command to learn the management of the ships. We will select from the circle of our relatives some young, able, reliable man to command these new troops.
The mechanical act of respiration merely serves to change the air contained within the air-receptacles. In the insects, this entire process is reversed; the air is carried by branching tubes to receptacles of blood scattered throughout the body; the blood-channels terminate in blood-extremities, and a capillary net-work of air-vessels is spread over these.
It is only recent science which has completely shown the perfectness of this minute symbol of the power of Athena; proving that the insect's flight and breath are co-ordinated; that its wings are actually forcing-pumps, of which the stroke compels the thoracic respiration; and that it thus breathes and flies simultaneously by the action of the same muscles, so that respiration is carried on most vigorously during flight, "while the air-vessels, supplied by many pairs of lungs instead of one, traverse the organs of flight in far greater numbers than the capillary blood-vessels of our own system, and give enormous and untiring muscular power, a rapidity of action measured by thousands of strokes in the minute, and an endurance, by miles and hours of flight."*
The sensorial power, or spirit of animation, used in giving perpetual and strong motion to the heart, which overcomes the elasticity and vis inertiæ of the whole arterial system; next the expense of sensorial power in moving with great force and velocity the innumerable trunks and ramifications of the arterial system; the expense of sensorial power in circulating the whole mass of blood through the long and intricate intortions of the very fine vessels, which compose the glands and capillaries; then the expense of sensorial power in the exertions of the absorbent extremities of all the lacteals, and of all the lymphatics, which open their mouths on the external surface of the skin, and on the internal surfaces of every cell or interstice of the body; then the expense of sensorial power in the venous absorption, by which the blood is received from the capillary vessels, or glands, where the arterial power ceases, and is drank up, and returned to the heart; next the expense of sensorial power used by the muscles of respiration in their office of perpetually expanding the bronchia, or air-vessels, of the lungs; and lastly in the unceasing peristaltic motions of the stomach and whole system of intestines, and in all the secretions of bile, gastric juice, mucus, perspirable matter, and the various excretions from the system.
The spirally-lined air-vessels run everywhere, and branch out everywhere. The insect, in fact, circulates air instead of blood. As the prick of the finest needle draws blood from the flesh of the backboned creature, it draws air from the flesh of the insect. Who will longer wonder, then, that the insect is so light? It is aerial in its inner nature.
Indeed, what mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his own doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence!
Encouraging the people. Maida's voice, futilely attempting to broadcast over the uproar. Georg commanding the official air-vessels to load with refugees; himself struggling to direct the jam of boats toward the embarking stages. We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue, though I had closed every casement.
This fills up the air-vessels, and would very soon end life, were it not for the spasms of the lungs, called coughing, which throw off this substance. If, on the other hand, the bowels are weak, a chill of the skin sends the blood into all the blood-vessels of the intestines, and produces inflammation there, or else an excessive secretion of the mucous substance, which is called a diarrhea.
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