202 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNOI 667. 



volatile spirits to the blood. And I remember it was so much taken notice of 

 that some very inquisitive members of the Society came presently to me, and 

 desired me to acquaint them more particularly with it; which I readily did, 

 though afterwards I made some further observations about the same experiment 

 that I had no occasion to relate. 



This having been so publicly done, though I shall not say that Siguier 

 Fracassati may not have hit as well as I upon the experiments published in his 

 name, yet there is so little difference between the warm blood of an animal out 

 of his veins and in them, that it is not very improbable that he may have had 

 some imperfect rumour of our experiment without knowing whence it came, and 

 so may, without any disingenuity, have thence taken a hint to make and publish 

 what now appears in the Transactions. If it be thought fit that any mention 

 be made of what I related so long since, I think I can send you some other cir- 

 cumstances belonging to it. For I remember I tried it with other liquors (as 

 spirit of wine, oil of tartar, oil of turpentine,) and I think also I can send you 

 some remarks upon the colour of the upper part of the blood. 



An Observation concerning the Epiploo??, or Double Membrane, ivhicli 

 covers the Entrails of Animals, and is filled with Fat.* By Malpighi. 

 N" 29, p' 553. 



The epiploon, looked at through a good microscope, is like a great sack, 

 full of abundance of other small sacks, which inclose gatherings of grease 

 or fat. There are many vessels, which may be called adipous or fatty, which, 

 issuing out of this membrane, and spreading themselves all over the body, 

 convey fat to it, just as the arteries carry the blood all over the same.-j- Where- 

 ever is fat or grease there is found store of these little sacks, wherein that is 

 inclosed, whence it is, that in lean and emaciated bodies, instead of fat you find 

 nothing but skins. 



The structure of these small sacks and of the adipous vessels sufficiently 

 shows that the fat is not formed accidentally out of the thick vapours of the 

 blood, as is the common belief. Nor is its chief use to foment the natural 

 heat, but it seems rather to conduce to the allaying of the acrimony of the salts 



• This observation should have been added to those inserted in No. 27 of this Abridgement, since 

 it is contained in tlae Exercitatio de Omento annexed to the Tetras Anatom. Epist. M. Malpighi. 



■\ What are here termed adipous vessels issuing out of the substance of the omentum, and termi- 

 nating in the sacks or cells wherein the fat is lodged, are nothing more than arterial ramuli, from the 

 extremities of which it would appear that the fat is deposited by transudation; for anatomists have 

 never detected a truly glandular apparatus for the secretion of the adipous fluid. 



