All blooded animals are furnished
with a liver. As a general rule blooded animals are furnished with a
spleen; but with the great majority of non-viviparous but oviparous
animals the spleen is so small as all but to escape observation; and
this is the case with almost all birds, as with the pigeon, the
kite, the falcon, the owl: in point of fact, the aegocephalus is
devoid of the organ altogether. With oviparous quadrupeds the case
is much the same as with the viviparous; that is to say, they also
have the spleen exceedingly minute, as the tortoise, the freshwater
tortoise, the toad, the lizard, the crocodile, and the frog.
Some animals have a gall-bladder close to the liver, and others
have not. Of viviparous quadrupeds the deer is without the organ, as
also the roe, the horse, the mule, the ass, the seal, and some kinds
of pigs. Of deer those that are called Achainae appear to have gall in
their tail, but what is so called does resemble gall in colour, though
it is not so completely fluid, and the organ internally resembles a
spleen.
However, without any exception, stags are found to have maggots
living inside the head, and the habitat of these creatures is in the
hollow underneath the root of the tongue and in the neighbourhood of
the vertebra to which the head is attached.
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