Fig. 256.—Anatomy of Salamander.
1a, heart; 2, lungs; 3a, stomach; 3b, intestine; 3c, large intestine; 4, liver; 8, egg masses; 10, bladder; 11, vent.
Respiration.—How many lungs? Are they simple or lobed? (Fig. [256].) A lung cut open is seen to be baglike, with numerous ridges on its inner surface. This increases the surface with which the air may come in contact. In the walls of the lungs are numerous capillaries. Does the frog breathe with mouth open or closed? Does the frog have any ribs for expanding the chest? What part of the head expands and contracts? Is this motion repeated at a slow or a rapid rate? Regularly or irregularly? There are valves in the nostrils for opening and closing them. Is there any indication of opening and closing as the throat expands and contracts? The mouth and throat (pharynx) are filled with air each time the throat swells, and the exchange of gases (which gases?) takes place continually through their walls and the walls of the lungs. At intervals the air is forced through the glottis into the lungs. After a short time it is expelled from the lungs by the muscular abdominal walls, which press upon the abdominal organs, and so upon the lungs. Immediately the air is forced back into the lungs, so that they are kept filled. In some species the lungs regularly expand at every second contraction of the throat. This is shown by a slight outward motion at the sides. Does the motion of the throat cease when the frog is under water? Why would the frog be unable to breathe (except through the skin) if its mouth were propped open? Why does the fact that the breathing is so slow as almost to cease during hibernation, aid the frog in going through the winter without starving? (Chap. I.) Why must frogs and toads keep their skins moist? Which looks more like a clod? Why?
The Heart and Circulation.—What is the shape of the heart? (Fig. [257].) Observe the two auricles in front and the conical ventricle behind them. The great arterial trunk from the ventricle passes forward beyond the auricles; it divides into two branches which turn to the right and the left (Fig. [257]). Each branch immediately subdivides into three arteries (Fig. [257]), one going to the head, one to the lungs and skin, and a third, the largest, passes backward in the trunk, where it is united again to its fellow.
Fig. 257.—Plan of Frog’s Circulation.
Venous system is black; the arterial, white. AU, auricles; V, ventricle; L, lung; LIV, liver. Aorta has one branch to right, another to left, which reunite below. Right branch only persists in birds, left branch in beasts and man.
Both the pulmonary veins, returning to the heart with pure blood from the lungs, empty into the left auricle. Veins with the impure blood from the body empty into the right auricle. Both the auricles empty into the ventricles, but the pure and the impure blood are prevented from thoroughly mixing by ridges on the inside of the ventricle. Only in an animal with a four-chambered heart does pure blood from the lungs pass unmixed and pure to all parts of the body, and only such animals are warm-blooded. The purer (i.e. the more oxygenated) the blood, the greater the oxidation and warmth.
Fig. 258.—Frog’s Blood (magnified 2500 areas). Red cells oval, nucleated, and larger than human blood cells. Nuclei of two white cells visible near centre. (Peabody.)
The red corpuscles in a frog’s blood are oval and larger than those of man. Are all of them nucleated? (Fig. [258].) The flow of blood in the web of a frog’s foot is a striking and interesting sight. It may be easily shown by wrapping a small frog in a wet cloth and laying it with one foot extended upon a glass slip on the stage of a microscope.