134 Transactions of the Society, 



advantage by it." Some of us have doubtless had a similar ex- 

 perience with specimens. He described the cornea accurately, and 

 found that its epithelium could be detached by immersion in hot 

 water ; the function of the eyelids he also explained. 



I can but just touch on a few of the many other things he 

 worked at. He was the first to describe the fibrillated structure of 

 muscle, and he described and figured the striation, which he called 

 " circular rimples," and the sarcolemma. He noticed the blighting 

 of young shoots in plants, and then discovered the Aphidye, and 

 observed the young in the bodies of their parents. He described 

 the circulation of the sap in plants, and found crystals therein. 

 He saw the fat globules in milk. He knew the skin consisted of 

 scales of cells, which had dried, which he said had grown up from 

 beneath and were worn off above. He noted that many of the 

 scales were " quinquelateral," and the scales from inside of mouth 

 were larger and thinner and in not so many layers. He described 

 liver-cells of the sheep, and of a " fat plethorick cow." He recog- 

 nized the fibres in brain and spinal cord, and noticed the extreme 

 thinness of their small blood vessels. 



He described the structure of teeth and figured it, and got 

 nearly as far as Havers in his account of the structure of bone. 

 He described the organisms found in his own and frogs' faeces. 

 He discovered that cochineal was an insect, not a plant as supposed, 

 and he first saw the tracheae in insects. Ciliar}^ motion on the 

 edge of the beard of an oyster ; the structure of oyster shells ; 

 shapes of many crystals, including those of theine and piperine 

 which he discovered in tea and pepper; the so-called vinegar-eels,' 

 nematode worms in intestine of frog, intestinal villi, gouty deposits, 

 and liver flukes — are a few only of the many other things he first 

 saw and described. He also suggested, with regard to the weevils 

 mentioned before, that granaries should be fumigated by burning 

 sulphur in them, so as to destroy the insects before they laid their 

 eggs : probably the first suggestion of a chemical germicide. He 

 was very interested at one time in urinary calculi, and spoke of 

 Doctors who pretended to have solvents for them as being " like 

 blind men talking of colours." He was the first to use the Micro- 

 scope in a medico-legal enquiry : some material was sent to him, 

 said to be hair voided from the bladder of a woman : he promptly 

 found it was wool from a stocking. 



Towards the end of his long life " incredulous Gainsayers," as 

 he calls tliem, must have worried him, for in a letter to the Eoyal 

 Society in 1722, in reply to a request to confirm some of his dis- 

 coveries by repeated observations, he says : " I beg leave to 

 observe to you, that I examine a great many different Subjects, of 

 which I commit no account to paper, because the result is the 

 same with what I have already described : and that whenever I 

 make any Discovery, which I apprehend will not easily meet with 

 credit, I sufter the object to lie before the Microscope da}^ after 



