Page:Life in Motion.djvu/146

126 loses, to some extent, the one gas, oxygen, while it gains the other, carbonic acid. It is thus changed from arterial or bright scarlet blood to dark venous blood. Here axe two jars, one containing oxygen the other containing carbonic acid. I add a little blood to each and shake it up with the gas. See the magnificent scarlet of the one and the dark purple of the other. The blood thus made venous is carried back to the heart by the veins, and is then sent to the lungs. Here it gets rid of a good deal of its carbonic acid, and gains more oxygen, and it is thus reconverted into arterial blood, to be again distributed through the body.

Now the tissues in which the consumption of oxygen and production of carbonic acid go on with greatest rapidity are the muscular tissues, and the more mechanical energy a muscle expends in doing work, the more oxygen it needs and the more carbonic acid it produces. The venous blood flowing out of a muscle is always rich in carbonic acid. Here are two muscles, both in an atmosphere of oxygen. Each is in a little tube inverted over mercury. The one has been at rest.