[347] i.e.. this phenomenon is a proof neither of peristolé nor of attraction. cf. p. 97, [note 2].
[348] Contraction and dilatation of course being reversed.
[349] The channa is a kind of sea-perch; “a species of Serranus, either S. scriba or S. cabrilla” (D’Arcy W. Thompson). cf. Aristotle’s Nat. Hist. (D’Arcy Thompson’s edition, Oxford, 1910), IV., xi., 538 A, 20. The synodont “is not to be identified with certainty, but is supposed to be Dentex vulgaris,” that is, an edible Mediterranean perch. “It is not the stomach,” adds Prof. Thompson, “but the air-bladder that gets everted and hangs out of the mouth in fishes, especially when they are hauled in from a considerable depth.” cf. H. A., VIII., ii., 591 B, 5.
[350] Under the term “neura,” tendons were often included as well as nerves. Similarly in modern Dutch the word zenuw (“sinew”) means both a tendon and a nerve; zenuwachtig = “nervous.”
[351] Rather than the alternative reading, τὸν ἔσωθεν χιτῶνα. Galen apparently supposes that the outer coat will not be damaged, as the cuts will pass between its fibres. These cuts would be, presumably, short ones, at various levels, no single one of them involving the whole circumference of the gullet.
[353] Thus Galen elsewhere calls the spleen a mere emunctory (ἐκμαγεῖον) of the liver. cf. p. 214, [note 1].
[355] The urinary bladders of pigs (such as Galen dissected) are thin, and appear to have only one coat.