27 



at various places. Yet the vessels of some 

 muscles are too minute to receive red 

 blood or our coloured injections, so that 

 redness though a common is not an es- 

 sential character of muscle. 



- .*: " 



I here willingly relinquish the enquiry 

 into the structure of those organs in 

 which the irritable property chiefly re- 

 sides, in order, in the next place, to speak 

 of the principal phsenomena of irrita- 

 bility. 3* 



Muscles have the power of contracting 

 with surprizing celerity and force. It 

 seems indeed wonderful that the biceps 

 muscle of the arm, which in the dead 

 state would be torn by the weight of a 

 few ounces appended to it, shall in the 

 living state be capable of lifting and sus- 

 taining more than 100 ibs. The matter 

 in the muscle seems neither to be in- 



