Circulation of the Blood. 147 



right focus for showing the capillaries, as if marked 

 with a sort of grained pattern (figs. 4 and 5). 



The capillaries represented in fig. 4 are only those 

 which lie near the surface. An examination of the 

 arrows which mark their directions will show how they 

 all flow to a twisted vessel, which pours the corpuscles 

 received from them into the large red vein. The large 

 red vein ! for, as viewed when highly magnified, it 

 is indeed a torrent and they who use a microscope 

 learn to regard the distinctions of great and small 

 as only relative. But let us consider, relatively speak- 

 ing, how small these vessels must be. The space 

 represented at fig. 4 is magnified 100 diameters. In 

 the drawing it is two inches and a quarter wide, by 

 rather less than an inch and three quarters high. The 

 hundredth part of that is about one forty-fourth of an 

 inch by one sixtieth, a space that could be included, 

 with room to spare above and below, in the upper 

 loop of any small ' ' g )J in the page you are reading ! 



Remembering this extreme minuteness of the 

 capillaries, the feeling with which we look on them 

 when magnified, as in fig. 5, becomes one of deep 

 reverence, and the more so because we observe them 

 ministering to a directly beneficent purpose. It may 

 seem like a mere ' ' dealing in the marvellous " to draw 

 attention to the fact that the whole of the capillaries 

 represented at fig. 5, could be covered up by one of 

 the full-stops at foot of the plate ; but I do so, because 

 by no other method could I so readily convey a correct 

 impression of the real size of these vessels, and that 

 of the corpuscles which they contain. 



