THE MUSCLES Importance of the Muscles.

It wouldn't be of much use to smell food, if we couldn't pick it up and bite it after we had reached it; or to see danger, if we were not able to move away from it.

Every animal that lives, moves; and every movement, whether of the entire body from one place to another, or of parts of the body changing their relations to one another, or altering their shape, is carried out by an elastic, self-moving body-stuff, which we call _muscle_.
All the work that we do, whether in earning our living, or catching our food, or chewing it, or swallowing it and driving it through our food tube, or pumping the blood through our arteries, or drawing air into our lungs, is done by muscles.

Hence, a very large part of the body has to be made of muscles.

In fact, our muscles, put together, weigh almost as much as all the other stuffs in the body, making over forty per cent of our weight.
How the Muscles Act.