MUSCLES OF ORGANIC LIFE. 297 



proportion, as mathematicians have calculated, which 173 bears 

 to 1000. The augmented weight, or what is the same thing, 

 the increase of power necessary to raise it, amounts, therefore, 

 to no less than 1058, instead of the original 60 pounds. There 

 is yet another source of loss of effect in its contraction, which 

 requires great additional power in the muscle to counteract it. 

 The tendon of the muscle is never directly continuous with the 

 muscular fibres, and the loss of power is exactly in proportion 

 to the obliquity of their junction. The manner of this loss is 

 evinced, when we attempt to draw a body to us, at one time 

 with a crooked, and at another, with a straight bar or stick. 

 From this cause there would be a further loss of power of 228 

 pounds, which would augment the muscular energy, required to 

 raise the 60 pounds, up to 1284, according to this physiologist. 

 In the muscles of organic life, destined to act without the aid 

 of the will, the system of antagonism, is much less perfectly 

 developed. These muscles are hollow, and their fibres are 

 arranged generally into layers, which cross each other at right 

 angles, and contribute, to a certain extent, to produce this effect. 

 The alternate contractions, of the auricles and ventricles of the 

 heart, and of the uterus, though these organs have, properly 

 speaking, no antagonist muscles, belong to this class. In some 

 of the hollow organs, as the bladder, the contracted muscular 

 fibres are expanded or antagonized, only by the matters which 

 collect in their cavities. 



The muscles of organic life, with the exception of the heart, 

 are of a pale or greyish white color. Some of them are so 

 thin, and of so pale a color, that it is impossible to draw the 

 line of distinction between them and cellular or aponeurotic 

 tissue. 



There is a regular gradation between muscular and desmoid 

 cellular tissue, now called contractile fibre or contractile tissue, 

 and an occasional substitution of the one for the other, in parts 

 that require elastic resistance, or firm support, that has been 

 overlooked by many anatomists. The yellow elastic ligarnen- 

 tous tissue, appears to be one medium between the muscular 

 and ligamentous tissue. Comparative anatomy shows us that 



