A Compendium of the Veterinary Art Author:James White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 17 PART II. THE STRUCTURE AND ECONOMY OF THE HORSE. CHAP. V. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE HORSE. [animal bodies differ from those of veget... more »ables chiefly in the possession of sensation and voluntary motion. Whilst the vegetable is confined to the soil in which it is located, and derives its subsistence from the surrounding elements, animals have the power of moving from place to place, and of gratifying the various sensations with which they are endowed. The structure of animals is, consequently, much more complicated than that of vegetables; but in proportion as an animal is low in the scale of creation — as it approaches a state of vegetable existence — we find its structure more simple—its sensations fewer, but its vitality greater. In the horse we have a high degree of organization, and consequently a vast variety of complex structures. The body is composed of solids and fluids; the latter exceeding the former in weight in the proportion of six or eight to one. To the solids, however, is owing the organization of the frame; for they surround and contain the fluids. Late anatomists consider that animals are composed of three forms of tissues, which they have denominated the Jibrous, the lamellar, and the globular. The two former are exemplified in the structure of the cellular substance, which composes the greatest portion of the animal fabric: the fibrous is characteristic of the muscular and ligamentous structures: the fibrous, united with the granular, is exhibited in the texture of the glands, and in the medullary substance of the nervous system; and the globular is shown in the composition of the chyle, the blood, and several of the secretions. These several textures being combined together in different proportions, we have the various organs of ...« less