circulation.
{Lines from Second Edition only.} [The venous return to the heart, as in the rabbit, is by paired venae cavae anteriores and by a single vena cava inferior. The factors of the anterior cava on either side are an external jugular (ex.j.) an innominate vein (in.v.) and subclavian (scl.v.). The last receives not only the brachial vein (b.v.) from the fore limb, but also a large vein bringing blood for the skin, the cutaneous (p.v.). The innominate vein has also two chief factors, the internal jugular (l.i.j.v.) and the subscapular (s.s.v.). The blood returns from each hind limb by a sciatic (l.sc.) or femoral (f.m.) vein, and either passes to a renal portal vein (l.r.p.), which breaks into capillaries in the kidney, or by a paired pelvic vein (l.p.v. in Figures 1 and 3) which meets its fellow in the middle line to form the anterior abdominal vein (a.ab.v.) going forward and uniting with the (median) portal vein (p.v.) to enter the liver.]
-The vessels are named in the references to the figure, which should be carefully copied and mastered. Here we need only- [Comparing with the rabbit, we would especially] call attention to the fact that the vena cava inferior extends posteriorly only to the kidney, and that there is a renal portal system. The blood from the hind limbs either flows by the anterior abdominal vein to the portal vein and liver, or it passes by the renal portal vein to the kidney. There the vein breaks up, and we find in the frog's kidney, just as we find in the frog's and rabbit's liver, a triple system of (a) nutritive arterial, (b) afferent* venous and (c) efferent** venous vessels.
* a, ad = to; ** e, ex = out of.
{This Section missing from Second Edition.} -Section 11. It is not very improbable that the kidney of the frog shares, or performs, some of the functions of the rabbit's liver, or parallel duties, in addition to the simply excretory function. Since specialization of cells must be mainly the relatively excessive exaggeration of some one of the general properties of the undifferentiated cell, it is not a difficult thing to imagine a gradual transition, as we move from one organism to another, of the functions of glands and other cellular organs. It is probable that the mammalian kidney is, physiologically, a much less important (though still quite essential) organ than the structures which correspond to it in position and development in the lower vertebrate types.-
Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata · The Wunder Library — complete classics, free to read, with narration.