220 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



insane man addresses you, looking into his face he said, " I 

 say, sir, did you thank God this morning for giving you 

 the right use of your mind ? " On receiving an honest 

 answer in the negative, he replied, " No more did I ; and 

 that's why He has taken it away ! " There ivas " method 

 in his madness." 



Look at another slide ; it is marked " Striated fibre, 

 human muscle." When we examine an ordinary piece of 

 flesh, say of a rump-steak, with the naked eye, we observe 

 that it is made up of a number of bundles of fibres, arranged 

 side by side with great regularity, in the direction in 

 which the muscle is to act: these bundles may be 

 separated into smaller parts, and then they appear as 

 they do in our specimen, as distinct fibres. 



Our muscles, then, are of different kinds, as our 

 nerves are, and just as there are nerves of sensation and 

 nerves of motion, so are there muscles of volition and 

 muscles of involition, and these voluntary and involuntary 

 muscles are of two different forms in their structure ; one, 

 the voluntary, is striated, that is, marked or impressed 

 with thread-like lines; you will see this with our 

 highest magnifying power, and, remember, it is significant 

 of the extreme fineness of their structure, that our sixth, 

 objective, whose power with the "A" eye-piece is 240 

 diameters, and with the " D " 910, and whose superficial 

 power, therefore, is, 828,100 times, is necessary to count 

 these otherwise invisible striated fibres which lie so closely 

 packed behind or next each other; but, though im- 

 perceptible to us, even with this excellent lens, there 

 is a space between each. Now, that space is the hunting- 

 ground of another disease, and, however uncertain we may 

 be of the natural history of the malady^we call " consump- 

 tion" whether it be morbid vegetable growth or not, it 

 leaves us in no doubt about the cause of the equally fatal 



